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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
Shelf £-£-£. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 



BETWEEN 



SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 



IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 



BETWEEN 



SHAKESPEAKE AND BACON? 






In life it (love) doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, some- 
times like- a Fury. You may observe, that amongst all the great and 
worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or 
recent), there is not one that hath been transported to the mad degree 
of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out 
this weak -passion.^-L* aeon's Essay on Love. 



Though the thing itself be disreputable in the profession of it, yet it 
is excellent as a discipline, we mean the action of the theatre ; for the 
discipline and corruption of the theatre is of very great consequence. 
Now of this corruption we have enough. Modern play acting is but a 
toy, except when it is too biting and satirical, but the ancients used 
it as a means of educating men's minds to virtue. — Bacon's Advance- 
ment of Learning. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
PEESS OF HENKY B. ASHMEAD. 

1888. 



> 



COPYEIGHT, 18S8. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Bacon's pride in his writings, and their competency as testimony 
— General ignorance concerning him and his works — His 104th 
Psalm — His biographers' opinions of his attempts at versifica- 
tion — His manuscript— The cipher— The churlish priest, . . 9 



CHAPTER II. 

Repugnance to the Baconites' claim— Queen Elizabeth's estimate 
of Bacon — His doubt of the permanency of the English lan- 
guage — His quotations — His opinion of stage acting — His Es- 
say on Masques and Triumphs — Ben Jonson's description of 
Shakespeare's strolling company, 26 



CHAPTER III. 

The stage as a symbol— Shakespeare— Bacon— Bacon's Notes on 
Conversation — Bacon's apparatus of rhetoric — The epitaph 
— Bacon's tomb— Bacon as an inquisitor — The quality of 
mercy— Earl of Southampton— Bacon's grants of patents to 
monopolies— Macaulay's estimate of Bacon's character— His 
servility to Buckingham— His pamphlet in favor of religious 
war— His falsification of history— Fairness of authorities 
quoted, 45 



CHAPTER IV. 

Bacon as a " soaring angel "—Advice to the person who has in- 
curred the displeasure of his prince— Thrift that follows 
fawning — Extracts from various essays— Essay on the True 
Greatness of Kingdoms— His attitude toward the civilization 

of his time, 67 

(iii) 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

Bacon's interpretation of "A just man is merciful to his beast," 
etc. — His Essay on Deformity — His interpretation of another 
proverb — His habit of generalization— His Essay on Friend- 
ship — Mode of treatment for the human mind — His Essay on 
Love— His corpuscular study of Cupid, SO 

CHAPTER VI. 

The New Atlantis— Bacon's sketch of Queen Elizabeth — His 
censure of fictions of the imagination — His resolve to pub- 
lish all his writings — Time occupied in writing the plays — 
The Sonnets — Cause of Queen Elizabeth's dislike of Bacon — 
His debts, 101 

CHAPTER VII. 

Court favorites as patrons of the stage — Shakespeare's industry — 
Bacon's manuscript — Bacon's experiment with the fowl — Ba- 
con's whereabouts when the plays were collected — Heminge 
and Condell— Globe Theatre— Adverse criticism upon Shake- 
speare — The classics — Bacon and the poem of Lucrece — Ba- 
con's marriage — The Promus, ; 126 

. CHAPTER VIII. 

What is known of Shakespeare during his life — Bacon's books 
and handwriting— His debts and enmities— His secretary — 
Cecil's letter to Bacon— Impossibility of writing in conceal- 
ment—Shakespeare's independence of character— The play of 
Richard II.— Puritanical hostility to the theatre— Shake- 
speare's fortune, 150 

CHAPTER IX. 

The record of Shakespeare's connection with the theatre and the 
plays performed before the court— Ben Jonson's sketch of 
Shakespeare— The court's protection of the players and slight 
esteem for Bacon's writings— Entry of King James into Lon- 



don, 



177 



PKBFAOE. 



The following pages are not written with the expect- 
ation o'f affecting the attitude of those who, from some 
unexplained animus, desire to dethrone Shakespeare and 
to enthrone Bacon ; neither are they expected to interest 
(although I hope they may) those who think this sub- 
ject undeserving of serious thought. There is, how- 
ever, a very large number whose doubts have been 
awakened, and who are honestly interested, to whom 
much in the nature of ordinary information that di- 
rectly concerns this inquiry may not be easily accessible, 
and to those I trust the matter that I have collected 
and the conclusions I have drawn may be acceptable. 

I have sought to present such points as appeal to 
reason and common sense, and have not elaborated 
them as might easily be done, as the facts in themselves 
are convincing to my judgment, and seem to need very 
little in the shape of argument to emphasize their force. 
I have quoted Bacon and his biographers very freely in 
order to show that in every quality he was the opposite 
of Shakespeare ; that he never did anything except for 
profit or fame, and would not have bestowed any pro- 
duction upon the world without recognition or reward. 

(v) 



VI PEEFACE. 

I have sought to show that he had neither the mind 
to form the language, the fancy to create the sentiment, 
the heart to feel the truth and beauty, nor the generos- 
ity to deny himself the authorship of such productions 
as the Shakespeare plays, and that absolutely no ground 
existed for concealment of poetic genius that would 
have aided his ambition : that he distrusted the per- 
manency of the English language, disparaged the stage, 
condemned as wasted the time spent on fiction and works 
of the imagination, spoke contemptuously of love, and 
sneered at lovers. • 

I have quoted some of the verse that Bacon positively 
did write, and have shown that for over forty years of 
his life (before Shakespeare's appearance and after his 
death) Bacon never wrote anything in the nature of 
poetry except the versification of a half dozen psalms, 
which his historians speak of as "flat effects," a bad 
lines," "ridiculous failures," and "low order," and 
which his present champions studiously ignore. 

I have referred to Bacon's antagonistic attitude 
toward the play of Eichard II., but I have hardly 
given full importance to the fact of Shakespeare's 
activity at that time, as the records show that there was 
no cessation in the production of the plays. In the 
year (1601) of the Essex trials and executions, in which 
Bacon was so prominent, he also wrote, and rewrote 
under the exacting critical revision of the queen, a jus- 



PREFACE. Vll 

tification of her course. It was submitted to her min- 
isters, and received the most careful examination and 
scrutiny before she would allow it to be issued. 
In that year Hamlet and AlFs Well that Ends Well 
were produced, much other writing and publishing 
done, and Shakespeare's company were travelling in 
Scotland part of the year. 

It is impossible for me to imagine Bacon indulging 
in such absorbing dramatic recreation at such a time 
and under these circumstances ; yet the more marvel- 
lous his performances are supposed to be, the better 
they fulfill the expectations of those who have no belief 
in Shakespeare's genius. 

In the Essex trials, where the play of Richard II. was 
a part of the indictment (probably drawn by Bacon), 
I have shown that Bacon, if he had written the play, 
could not have appeared as prosecutor without, at least, 
a guarantee of Shakespeare's silence (page 166). I might 
have inserted there, as a singularly pertinent answer to 
such a supposition, a verse from As You Like It, writ- 
ten about that time, which reads as though suggested by 
an aversion to the part that Bacon was acting : 

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
That dost not bite so nigh, 

As benefits forgot : 
Though thou the waters warp, 
Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remember'd not. 



Vlll . PREFACE. 

In the life-time of these two men, one, by the " sweet- 
ness of his nature " and his " uprightness of dealing," 
won the love of his friends and fellows, while the other, 
by his "coldness of heart and meanness of spirit," 
drew upon • himself universal contempt and hatred. 
Now, after three centuries, a number of people appear 
who seem to delight in defaming the former and laud- 
ing the latter. They invent situations, invest historical 
characters with prejudices contrary to the facts, and one 
of them has quite outstripped all the others by con- 
structing an arithmetical vagary, crazy enough to set 
bedlam in ecstasy, in order to show Bacon's genius and 
inclination to have been what every fact in his life 
naturally and logically disproves. They betray a 
marked neglect of simple inconsistencies and the tests 
of ordinary probability. According to the usual mode 
of reasoning, until these are examined the argument 
cannot properly advance to the consideration of mechan- 
ical impossibilities born of mental idiosyncrasy, of 
imaginary hidden meanings and aimless mysterious 
motives. But by whatever extraordinary devices they 
strive to influence opinion, in so far as their efforts in- 
vite a study of Bacon the friends of Shakespeare 
should wish them all success, for in that the most 
effective refutation of the Baconites' claims will be 
found. 

Philadelphia, starch, 1888. 



CHAPTER I. 

Bacon's pride in his writings, and their competency as testi- 
mony — General ignorance concerning him and his works — 
His 104th Psalm — His biographers' opinions of his at- 
tempts at versification — His manuscript — The cipher — The 
churlish priest. 

If Lord Bacon could have foreseen that a dispute 
would arise at some future time concerning him, and 
especially as an author, he would have been perfectly 
satisfied to have his writings speak for him, for no one 
ever dwelt with more satisfaction than he on one's own 
literary productions. 

His writings are pervaded with a tone of self- 
satisfaction, or even felicitation, that betrays his belief 
that they shall be an enduring monument to his great- 
ness of mind and his work ; indeed, he admits this to 
be his ambition. 

His introduction to one of his works has this head- 
ing: 

"Francis of Verulam's 

GREAT INSTAURATION. 

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE AUTHOR. 

" Francis of Yerulam thought thus, and such is the 
method which he determined within himself, and which 
he thought it concerned the living and posterity to 
know." 

He nowhere conceals his concern as to the place ne 
shall occupy in history, or his anxiety as to how poster- 
ed 



10 IS THEKE ANY BESEMBLAXCE 

ity shall judge him, and to secure for himself the fame 
that he so earnestly desired he spent untold time and 
labor upon the works that have been issued in his 
name. His Xovuni Organum was revised and copied 
twelve times before he gave it to the public, and he is 
said to have had it under reflection for forty years. 

Some idea may be formed of the value he placed 
upon his works and his solicitude for their preservation 
from the following paragraph, written by Joseph De- 
vey, M.A., in his introduction to Bacon's works : " The 
fate of Chaucer haunted him. He thought that mod- 
ern languages would play the bankrupt with books ; 
and if he did not enshrine his thoughts in a dead lan- 
guage, his name would never travel abroad, and would 
positively die out among his own countrymen in the 
next generation. With the assistance of Herbert, Play- 
fair, and some add Ben Jonson, he gave his new treatise, 
together with his essays and many of his minor pieces, 
a Latin dress ; but on contrasting those works with the 
Xovum Organum, originally written by him in Latin, 
it does not appear that he was much indebted to the 
attainments of his translators." 

Macaulay says of him, " In his will he expressed 
with singular brevity, energy and pathos a mournful 
consciousness that his actions had not been such as to 
entitle him to the esteem of those under whose observa- 
tion his life had been passed, and at the same time a 
proud confidence that his writings had secured for him 
a high and permanent place among the benefactors of 
mankind." 

The high estimate that he placed upon his writings 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 11 

and the care with which he prepared them make them 
most competent testimony for him in a matter of liter- 
ary comparison. They go further than that. They 
define his character, taste and opinions with such em- 
phasis, repetition and uniformity as to mark his atti- 
tude distinctly toward every phase of the Shakespeare 
controversy. 

What " Francis of Verulam thought " (and what it 
now seems to "concern posterity to know") of the 
stage , of fiction and of works of imagination is expressed 
in so pronounced a manner in his writings as to leave 
no doubt as to his judgment upon this pertinent point 
of the present inquiry. 

The fame that admirers of Bacon are trying to se- 
cure for him is not only very different from, but quite 
opposite to, the kind of reputation that he tried to 
establish for himself; and if many of the people who 
allow themselves to doubt Shakespeare's authorship, 
because " so little is known of him," will examine their 
own knowledge, they will discover, I think, that they 
know fully as much about him as about Bacon. 

Bacon's fame rests chiefly upon what somebody else 
knows of him. His books have been relegated to re- 
mote places in libraries, and the general idea of what 
they contain is largely supposition. He is supposed to 
have written a large number of moral essays, and to 
have discovered a new system of physics, both of which 
ideas are only partly true. His scientific work contains 
grave and fundamental errors. King James, to whom 
it was dedicated, said of it, " It is like the peace of 
God, that passeth understanding ;" and it is not going 



12 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

too far to say that some of his essays are contemptible. 
In support of which assertion I will produce a number 
in the course of this article. 

Hume says of him, " Most of his performances were 
composed in Latin ; though he possessed neither the 
elegance of that nor his native tongue. If we consider 
him merely as an author and philosopher, the light in 
which we view him at present, though very estimable, 
he was yet inferior to his contemporary Galilseo, per- 
haps even to Kepler. Bacon pointed out at a distance 
the road to true philosophy ; Galilaeo pointed it out to 
others, and made, himself, considerable advances in it. 
The Englishman was ignorant of geometry ; the Flor- 
entine revived that science, excelled in it, and was the 
first that applied it, together with experiment, to nat- 
ural philosophy. The former rejected, with the most 
positive disdain, the system of Copernicus; the latter 
fortified it with new proofs, derived both from reason 
and the senses. Bacon's style is stiff and rigid. His 
wit, though often brilliant, is also often unnatural and 
far fetched, and he seems to be the original of those 
pointed similes and long- spun allegories which so much 
distinguish the English authors." 

His reputation exists now upon a preconceived idea 
of his mind, taste and character. He retains an erro- 
neous place in the estimation of the public generally 
from being so little read. This is the case to that ex- 
tent that one finds numbers of people who readily 
admit that they know little or nothing of him them- 
selves, that they have not read his books ; yet they are 
willing to admit the probability of his having written 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 13 

Shakespeare's marvellous works, simply from a vague 
impression of the universal nature of his acquirements. 

I have thought that perhaps this easy admission of 
what seems to me to be without a single fact or prob- 
ability to support it might be owing to a belief that 
the voluminous character of his writings makes it 
difficult to decide, without great labor, as to his poetic 
and dramatic talent. This is certainly an error. His 
metaphysical and legal works are entirely irrelevant to 
this subject except as showing the nature of the study 
to which he devoted himself. His speculative works 
are not at all bulky, and are too positive to permit more 
than one interpretation of his attitude toward the stage 
and the drama. His faith in himself is too firm to 
allow any doubts to enter his mind in regard to the 
subjects which concern this inquiry ; consequently his 
opinions are expressed in a manner not easily misun- 
derstood. To discover what manner of man he was 
does not require much speculation, analysis or sharpness 
of intellect; for one can judge, with far greater confi- 
dence, the probabilities and possibilities of a nature that 
is fixed, dogmatic and matter-of-fact than of a tolerant, 
imaginative and subtle mind and disposition. Also in 
addition to his own writings we have the opinions of 
his historians, who are critics very partial to him ; and 
history furnishes facts in his political career that have 
an important bearing upon his relation to the plays. 

Bacon never wrote any poetry ; at least he published 
none ; and this suggests some pertinent inquiries. For 
instance, granting him Shakespeare's genius, why should 
he confine himself to writing plays ? It is quite nat- 



14 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

ural that Shakespeare should do so, for he was au actor 
and the stage was his profession and livelihood. Bacon 
had no such interest. If a prejudice existed against 
play writing, there was certainly none against such 
verses as those of Spenser, Sydney, Raleigh, Milton 
and a hundred others. Yet there is nowhere as much 
as a stray fragment of such poetry among his man- 
uscripts. The theory of his champions supposes that 
he never wrote the things which he might safely 
acknowledge, but that he schemed and labored exclu- 
sively to produce only such works as would jeopard his 
reputation and position. It cannot be conceived that he 
would have felt no pride in his art, or that he would 
not have been recognized by the poets of his time, or 
that he would not have contributed largely to the verse 
of that age had he possessed such talent ; and it cannot 
be believed that he would have devoted such genius to 
any one field to the total exclusion of everything else, 
especially to a calling that he considered " corrupt and 
disreputable," and which could bring him little if any 
profit, and might do him much mischief, if his friends' 
views are correct. It is frequently urged by Shake- 
speare's friends that he could not have secured and 
maintained the respect and love of his fellows and 
patrons if he had not been capable of writing the plays 
which he produced. It is fully as pertinent to point 
out that Bacon could not have concealed such talent 
from the wits of the age had he possessed it. 

Again, why should Bacon's muse expire when Shake- 
speare left the stage ? He lived fifteen years after that, 
but there were no more such plays or productions. If 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 15 

Shakespeare had only been a mask for him, his absence 
would merely have necessitated another disguise ; and 
as Ben Jonson outlived Bacon eleven years and was his 
intimate friend and eulogist, he might have been a most 
opportune substitute for Shakespeare. Bacon did write 
some verses, or, at least, he put some psalms into 
rhyme ; but there is nothing in this feat that contradicts 
the assertion that he wrote no poetry. I think there 
are eight of these versifications, and I will copy the 
104th Psalm, which is the longest : 

" Father and King of powers, both high and low, 

Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow ; 

My soul shall with the rest strike up thy praise, 

And carol of thy works and wondrous ways. 

But who can blaze thy beauties, Lord, aright ? 

They turn the brittle beams of mortal sight. 

Upon thy head thou wearest a glorious crown 

All set with virtues, polished with renown : 

Then round about a silver veil doth fall 

Of crystal light, mother of colors all. 

The compass heaven, smooth without grain or fold, 

All set with spangs of glittering stars untold, 

And striped with golden beam of power unpent, 

Is raised up for a removing tent. 

Vaulted and arched are his chamber beams 

Upon the seas, the waters, and the streams : 
. The clouds as chariots swift do scour the sky ; 

The stormy winds upon their wings do fly. 

His angels spirits are that wait his will, 

As flames of fire his anger they fulfill. ' 

In the beginning, with mighty hand, 

He made the earth by counterpoise to stand, 

Never to move, but to be fixed still ; 

Yet hath no pillars but his sacred will. 

This earth, as with a veil, once covered was, 



16 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

The waters overflowed all the mass : 
But upon his rebuke away they fled, 
And then the hills began to show their head; 
The vales their hollow bosoms opened plain, 
The streams ran trembling down the vales again ; 
' And that the earth no more might drowned be, 
He set the sea his bounds of liberty ; 
And though his waves resound, and beat the shore, 
Yet it is bridled by his holy lore. 
Then did the rivers seek their proper places, 
And found their heads, their issues, and their races ; 
The springs do feed the rivers all the way, 
And so the tribute to the sea repay : 
Running along through many a pleasant field, 
Much fruitfulness unto the earth they yield ; 
That know the beasts and cattle feeding by, 
Which for to slake their thirst do thither hie. 
Nay desert grounds the streams do not forsake, 
But through the unknown ways their journeys take : 
The asses wild that hide in wilderness 
Do thither come, their thirst for to refresh. 
The shady trees along their banks do spring 
In which the birds do build, and sit, and sing; 
Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes, 
Plaining or chirping through their warbling throats. 
The higher grounds, where waters cannot rise, 
By rain and dews are watered from the skies ; 
Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts, 
And garden herbs served at the greatest feasts ; 
And bread, that is all viands' firmament, 
And gives a firm and solid nourishment; 
And wine, man's spirits for to recreate ; 
And oil, his face for to exhilarate. 
The sappy cedars, tall like stately towers, 
High-flying birds do harbor in their bowers : 
The holy storks, that are the travellers, 
Choose for to dwell and build within the firs ; 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 17 

The climbing goats hang on steep mountain's side ; 

The digging conies in the rocks do bide. 

The moon, so constant in inconstancy, 

Doth rule the seasons orderly ; 

The sun, the eye of the world, doth know his race, 

And when to show and when to hide his face. 

Thou makest darkness that it may be night 

When the savage beasts that fly the light 

(As conscious of man's hatred) leave their den, 

And range abroad secured from sight of men. 

Then do the forests ring of lions roaring 

That ask their meat of God, their strength restoring; 

But when the day appears, they back do fly, 

And in their dens again do lurking lie. 

The rolling seas unto the lot doth fall 

Of beasts innumerable, both great and small. 

The fishes there far voyages do make ; 

To divers shores their journey they do take. 

All these do ask of thee their meat to live 

Which in due season thou dost give. 

All life and spirit from thy breath proceed, 

Thy word doth all things generate and feed ; 

If thou withdrawest it, then they cease to be, 

And straight return to dust and vanity. 

The earth shall quake if aught his wrath provoke; 

Let him but touch the mountains, they shall smoke. 

As long as life doth last I hymns will sing 

With cheerful voice to the eternal King. 

I know that he my words will not despise, 

Thanksgiving is to him a sacrifice. 

But as for sinners, they shall be destroyed 

From off the earth; their places shall be void. 

Let all his works praise him with one accord ; 

Oh, praise the Lord, my soul ; praise ye the Lord !" 

These rhymes were not written in Bacon's youth, but 
two years before his death, and eight years after Shake- 
2 



18 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

speare died. He dedicated them to his friend Herbert, 
and published them. They are of particular import- 
ance as evidence of his talent for versification on ac- 
count of being written so late in his life. They were 
published about the time that Heminge and Condell 
were publishing the folio edition of 1623, under diffi- 
culties so well known, when the real author of the plays 
could have rendered such inestimable service. The plays 
had then been in existence many years, some at least 
thirty, none less than twelve ; the sonnets thirty years, 
and Lucrece nearly as long. Therefore, to believe 
Bacon the author of the plays is to suppose, not that 
he was an unskilled versifier when he wrote the psalms, 
but that the author of these rhymes was the ripe and 
unequalled poet, the veteran who had already given 
Shakespeare's works to the world. 

Spedding of Trinity College is one of Bacon's most 
partial historians, and it is interesting to know what he, 
as one of Bacon's friendliest critics, thinks of his ability 
in this department of literature : — " The translation of 
certain psalms into English verse are the only verses 
certainly of Bacon's making that have come down to us, 
and probably with one or two exceptions are the only 
verses he ever attempted." This historian goes on then 
to say that he has " watched Bacon's progress in versi- 
fication," and that the " effect of the two first experi- 
ments is flat enough," but as he advances, " although 
there is an inevitable loss of lyric fire and force, this is 
compensated by the development of meanings," etc. 
Again he says : " In compositions upon which a man 
would have thought it a culpable waste of time to bestow 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 19 

any serious labor, it would be idle to seek either for 
indications of his taste or for a measure of his powers." 

And again : " Of these verses of Bacon's it has been 
usual to speak not only as a failure, but as a ridiculous 
failure : a censure in which I cannot concur. An un- 
practiced versifier, who will not take time and trouble 
about the work, must of coarse leave many bad verses ; 
for poetic feeling and imagination, though they will 
dislike a wrong word, will not of themselves suggest a 
right one that will suit metre and rhyme ; and it would 
be easy to quote from the few pages, not only many bad 
lines, but many poor stanzas." 

I have copied what Bacon's historians say of his half 
dozen attempts at versification, because I wish to draw 
attention to the fact that the men who had such abun- 
dant opportunity to discover the nature of his life's work 
speak of his few experiments in rhyme at the age of 
sixty — upwards — as a new form of mental activity. 
These men had made it the business of many years to 
learn everything concerning Bacon's life. They had 
searched every place and studied every piece of writing 
to discover and preserve any and everything that could 
throw light upon his character and genius; and yet there 
is no hint of a suspicion that any rumor or report had 
ever reached them that he might be Shakespeare in dis- 
guise. If they overlooked anything that could establish 
Bacon's right to Shakespeare's genius, then what they 
missed was infinitely more than that which they found. 

A singular feature in this discussion is that Bacon's 
biographers, who had access to his manuscripts, memo- 
randums, letters, and the private recesses of his library, 



20 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

are not among those who connect him with Shakespeare. 
This is because the claim is not made upon evidence, 
but is simply a belief in Bacon founded upon a disbelief 
in Shakespeare. Bacon's biographers do not share this 
belief or disbelief. Mr. Devey, for instance, says, " In 
casting the horoscope of the future, or tracing, with 
certain hand, the progress of civilization, who shall 
account for the appearance of such men as Dante and 
Shakespeare, who have created a new language; of 
Cromwell and Luther, who have revolutionized em- 
pires ; of Newton and Archimedes, who have intro- 
duced a new element into science?" 

It is no obstacle to the belief of Bacon's friends that 
the plays are the work of an average lifetime, that they 
were put upon the stage by Shakespeare, and that 
Bacon's biographers (and his brother to whom his 
manuscripts were bequeathed) found no scrap or hint 
of an incident to indicate or betray the accomplishment 
of such an immense work and involving the agency of 
at least one other person. 

His historians say he considered even the versification 
of the psalms a " culpable waste of time;" yet one 
"great student" (at least) is not influenced by such 
testimony, and he is said to have accumulated tons of 
evidence to prove not only that he wrote plays greater 
in volume than his scientific works, but that he had the 
time, patience and ingenuity to insert an arithmetical 
device in them to attest his authorship. 

It would not be any more incongruous to suppose 
Beethoven running a drum movement containing some 
occult alphabetical trade-mark through his symphonies, 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 21 

than to think such compositions could be accompanied 
by anything so cheap and mechanical. 

This " great student" has undertaken the task of 
adding even more than Shakespeare to Bacon, for his 
theory ascribes to Bacon also the divination to foresee 
that a man would appear who could and would work 
out his puzzle. The enigma, of course, would be of no 
use unless some one could solve it, and might easily 
defeat its own object. Considering how many easier 
and common-sense ways might be devised to disclose a 
posthumous secret, the choice of such an uncertain and 
extraordinary one needs explanation, and this perhaps 
is furnished by the assumption of Bacon's faith in the 
zeal and cleverness of one for centuries yet unborn. 

The Trinity College historians were great admirers 
of Bacon. Their account of- him says he had the 
" natural faculties a poet wants : a fine ear for metre, 
a fine feeling for imaginative effect in words, and a vein 
of poetic passion," and that he was " not without fine 
frenzy." Here then is a voluntary admission by a 
most indulgent and partial critic, that Bacon was usually 
considered a ridiculous failure as a versifier, followed 
by an apology for his lack of success at poetry, on the 
ground of a want of practice and a lack of interest. I 
have said the plays had then been in existence many 
years, but they existed in such an uncared-for shape 
that the attention of some one capable of appreciating 
their worth and putting them in their original form 
would doubtless have given them to us more complete 
and beautiful in many parts than we have them. As 
Bacon did nothing toward their preservation or pub- 



22 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

lication (in such strong contrast with his solicitude for 
his writings), his indifference about them or ignorance 
of them cannot be reconciled with any claim to their 
authorship; and it seems as though his friends were 
willing to commit him to any absurdity when they 
picture him concocting a scheme to insure himself the 
fame in the future of having written the plays, while 
quite unconcerned what becomes of them in the present; 
especially as he had so little faith in the survival of the 
language in which the plays were written, that he had 
taken the precaution to put his works into a dead tongue 
to insure their perpetuity. 

It is not speculation, however, but fact, that at the 
time Heminge and Condell were collecting and publish- 
ing Shakespeare's plays, Bacon wrote the psalms. His 
historians did not think them very bad or without 
•poetic passion, notwithstanding their " bad lines " and 
"flat effects;" but the thought of their having been 
written by the real Shakespeare probably never occurred 
to them. 

These lines should be very disheartening to any one 
looking for similarities between Shakespeare and Bacon ; 
for instance : 

" Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts, 
And garden herbs, served at the greatest feasts, 
And bread, that is all viands' firmament, 
And gives a firm and solid nourishment, 
And wine, man's spirits for to recreate, 
And oil, his face for to exhilarate." 

Of course he did not compose the sentiment ; it seems 
to me that he has hardly preserved it. It does not 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 23 

suggest the bounty of nature as much as the meal-time 
of the living creatures. 

A "firmament of bread," the "hollow bosoms of 
the vales," the " lions roaring to God for their meat," 
are not pleasant fancies. 

" The earth shall quake if aught his wrath provoke ; 
Let him but touch the mountains, they shall smoke." 

It is only necessary to compare Bacon's uncouth ver- 
sification with the original psalm, to see that he has 
destroyed its sublimity and spirituality and has only 
preserved its material sense, if he has not travestied it. 

" The compass heaven, smooth without grain or fold, 
All set with spangs of glittering stars untold, 
And striped with golden beams of power unpent, 
Is raised up for a removing tent. 

The moon, so constant in inconstancy, 

Doth rule the seasons orderly ; 

The sun, the eye of the world, doth know his race, 

And when to show and when to hide his face. 

Thou makest darkness that it may be night 

When the savage beasts that fly the light 

(As conscious of man's hatred) leave their den, 

And range abroad secured from sight of men. 

Then do the forests ring of lions roaring 

That ask their meat of God, their strength restoring ; 

But when the day appears they back do fly, 

And in their dens again do lurking lie." 

The thing of first importance in the introduction of 
the Baconite theory is to prove that Bacon never wrote 
this psalm. While these lines exist as his production 



24 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

they must be accepted as the gauge of his ability, and 
that is fatal to the claim that is made for him. They 
are witnesses that must be silenced. They could not be 
inserted in any Shakespeare piece and escape detection 
by a school-boy. They compare unfavorably with any- 
thing in print of that age. Those who think that 
Shakespeare needed Bacon's learning to enable him to 
write the plays may judge from this versification how 
much Bacon's learning contributed to his poetry. 

The use of the words " do " and " for to " may be 
intended as very stately and formal, and at that time 
perhaps may not have been considered so inelegant as 
now ; but the repetition, line after line, of such un- 
varied terms exposes a dearth of fancy, imagination 
and taste, and is most tiresome and unpleasing. In the 
selections from a hundred different poets and ballad- 
writers which I have seen collected in one volume, from 
1400 to 1626, the year of Bacon's death, there is not 
anything that is not infinitely superior to Bacon's 
verses, which I think have never received the compli- 
ment of being printed in any collection of poems, or, 
so far as I know, have never appeared outside of his 
own works or in any book or article on this subject, 
and I doubt if many people know they exist. 

His lines not only prove that he was not a poet, but 
they show that he had not sufficient sentiment to teach 
him that they were weak and trashy and should have 
been burned, not published. He ought to have hidden 
them from his valet or chambermaid. It is impossible 
to imagine the author of these lines rising to the genius 
of the plays, or the author of the plays falling to the 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 25 

level of such verse. In all of Bacon's writings upon 
this subject it will be seen that he robs it of "fair or- 
nament" and reveals only its " grossness ;" and in this 
also he presents as opposite a character to Shakespeare 
as does the churlish priest to Laertes. 

" P. — She should in ground unsanctified have lodged 
Till the last trumpet ; for charitable prayers, 
Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her. 
L. — Lay her i' the earth ; 

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring ! I tell thee, churlish priest, 
A ministering angel shall my sister be 
When thou liest howling." 

A like rebuke to a priest or condemnation of a church 
ordinance is contrary to every utterance of Bacon, and 
he would never have written : 

"Bass. — The world is still deceived with ornament. 
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt 
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, 
Obscures the show of evil ? In religion, 
What damned error but some sober brow " 
Will bless it, and approve it with a text 
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ?" 

There is a depth of earnestness, or, indeed, of indig- 
nant protest, in these lines that could never emanate 
from a courtier, time-server or politician, or any one 
not moved and incensed by the knowledge and injustice 
of the thing described. 



26 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 



CHAPTER II. 

Repugnance to the Baconites' claim — Queen Elizabeth's esti- 
mate of Bacon — His doubt of the permanency of the 
English language — His quotations — His opinion of stage 
acting — His Essay on Masques and Triumphs — Ben Jon- 
son's description of Shakespeare's strolling company. 

Among the lovers of Shakespeare, I think there is a 
repugnance to the thought of attributing the authorship 
to Bacon, that would not be felt to nearly the same 
degree if the claim were made for any one of a half 
dozen others; for instance, Marlowe, Decker and 
Fletcher. These men were Shakespeare's friends. 
The stage was their livelihood. Their hearts were in 
this art. They loved and honored their profession. 
They had great dramatic talent, and one's heart warms 
to them for their comradeship with Shakespeare and 
willingly accords them some of the glory. 

But Bacon's inferiority in everything that constitutes 
Shakespeare's charm, his expressed contempt for the 
stage, and the mean motive upon which his claim to 
Shakespeare's works is based (viz., that from sheer 
cupidity he disowned his work), stirs up a feeling of 
protest, as though the plays themselves were threatened 
with some loss or injury. 

The lovers of the plays demand that they shall have 
an honest origin and a manly author, and will not 
believe that they could have been written in fear and 
shame, sneaked out of a back door and imposed upon 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 27 

the wittiest and brightest people of that age. Con- 
sidering the undisputed place that is given them, it is 
natural that any question of their authorship should 
awaken a deep interest ; but it is singular that any one 
should be willing to dethrone the man who positively 
put them on the stage, and whose claim to them was 
absolutely unquestioned during his lifetime and for 
more than two centuries after his death, without, at 
least, a most searching test of the right of the new 
claimant. It is singular also that people should so 
passively echo the refrain of the doubters as to the 
college-bred requirements of their author. The most 
beautiful parts in Shakespeare are in the simplest 
language, and there is nothing in the plays that the 
genius that produced the verse could not have learned 
from reading. The one essential that learning and 
study could not supply was the mind and genius that 
was .born in Shakespeare. 

But the intellectual feature of the subject is not the 
only one ; the character, taste and employments of the 
two men are almost as much a part of it as the question 
of their learning and literary ability. 

It may be urged that Bacon's writings are in accord 
with the philosophy of the plays, even if his character 
was not, and therefore that his career cannot be cited 
against him as their author. It is my conviction that 
this is not true, and that his writings plainly teach the 
methods by which he lived ; that his rules of life, his 
ambition, tastes, principles and prejudices, were totally 
antagonistic to the spirit of the plays, not artistically 
alone, but in all the truth that they affirm and all the 



28 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

wrong that they expose. This I shall hereafter endeavor 
to demonstrate by his own expressions. 

It is impossible to doubt Shakespeare's sincerity. 
Each one unconsciously and irresistibly forms an idea 
of an author, justifying or rejecting what he conveys to 
the imagination of each ; and thus to the lovers of 
Shakespeare the incomparable poet is a lovable man, 
full of nobility and manhood, and cannot be the corrupt 
judge and servile politician. 

It is singular that Bacon's learning should give him 
any eligibility to dramatic genius. He was a great 
student and a ready, voluble lawyer. He was well 
read in everything extant at that time. He had, above 
everything else, a remarkable memory, but, in my judg- 
ment, limited originality except for law and physics, 
and his extreme love for these indicates the absence of 
qualities which belong to the poet or dramatist. 

If I have ventured very far in doubting his more 
than ordinary originality, I have very distinguished 
authority of his own time to sustain my disbelief; one 
indeed who knew him intimately, and one to whom he 
gave a new year's gift, 1599-1600, described as follows : 
" By Mr. Frauncis Bacon, one pettyccte of white sat- 
ten, embrothered all over like feathers and billets, with 
three brode borders, faire embrothered with snakes and 
frutage :" no other than Queen Elizabeth herself, who 
said of him, " Bacon hath great wit and learning, but 
in law he showeth to the uttermost of his knowledge, 
and is not deep." 

The gift of the dress shows that Bacon had " wit " 
enough to know the accessible side of the queen. I 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 29 

have read that she issued a proclamation to restrain the 
growing extravagance of her subjects in matters of ap- 
parel, but that she herself appeared almost every day 
in a different habit, and was so fond of her clothes that 
she would not part with them ; and when she died 
there were in her wardrobe three thousand dresses that 
she had worn during her lifetime. 

It is reasonable to suppose that if Bacon had written 
the plays they would have been translated into Latin, 
as his published works were. I think there is nothing 
over his signature, except his letters, that have not at 
least a Latin title. While he was so unappreciative 
of the English language, and held it so cheaply, that 
he would not entrust his writings to it, Shakespeare was 
discovering and creating a depth of power, expression, 
feeling and beauty in it that alone would make it im- 
mortal. It is a very strong side-light upon the im- 
probability of Bacon's hand in these writings, that they 
are the masterpieces of a language that he valued so 
lightly. To him a dead tongue was more than the 
language in which the plays were written. 

Another feature that is very prominent in Bacon's 
writings, and which is also in striking contrast with 
Shakespeare, is his monumental habit of quotation, 
allusion, illustration and reference to other writings, 
occasions and incidents. It is boundless. It gives evi- 
dence of most extensive reading and phenomenal mem- 
ory. He had a habit of jotting down whatever caught 
his attention, both in his reading and in occurrences. 
He could not, however, have used notes simply, with 
such facility. He must have had a memory quick and 



30 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

ready, and one that could always be depended on. His 
writings unprofessional are brimful of such instances. 
Every page and almost every paragraph contains them. 
It is the scaffolding upon which he supports all his 
speculative theories, and is (I think) by far the most 
interesting and substantial part of the structure. His 
works are so full of this kind of padding, borrowed 
from every conceivable source, that they would not hold 
together without it. They would be a very rags." 
This habit of illustration by analogy drawn from such 
a vast range of subjects, which embellished his pages 
and at the same time displayed his learning, was not 
only a necessity to him, but it was his undisguised pride. 
He says, in Advancement of Learning, " The way of 
delivery by aphorisms has numerous advantages over 
the methodical. First, it gives us a proof of the 
author's abilities, and shows whether he hath entered 
deep into his subject or not." One who has a happy 
faculty of using others' thoughts makes them half 
his own. Bacon fully appreciated that. The foreign 
matter that he crammed into his Essays was the pith 
of them. In them he never stood alone. He used 
everything he could capture to extend his articles, even 
if he had to strain the life and shape out of it as his 
witness. He certainly possessed this faculty to an un- 
common extent, and it was a valuable help to him, but 
it is just the opposite of originality. Although he used 
so much that was not his own and may have made it 
serve his purposes then, it does not bear criticism now. 
His nature was so material that he could scarcely com- 
prehend the spiritual and moral in any true sense ; and 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 31 

much that he quoted he distorted into meanings con- 
trary to its original intention, as I shall endeavor to 
show. 

Yet his habitual citing of instances to support his 
theories and gain his ends exhibited him at his best and 
gave him great power and renown. 

I have emphasized this habit of straining after sup- 
ports to show how different it is from Shakespeare. 
Mr. Fred. Gard Fleay, in his Life of Shakespeare, page 
75, says, " For Marlowe he had a sincere regard ; from 
his poem of Hero and Leander, Shakespeare makes the 
only direct quotation to be found in his plays ; on his 
(Marlowe's) historical plays Shakespeare, after his 
friend's decease, bestowed in addition, revision and com- 
pletion a greater amount of minute work than on his 
own." 

If I were candidly trying to convince myself that 
Bacon wrote the plays, I should feel it essential to my 
belief that some probable reason should be found to ex- 
plain this dissimilarity, which is so distinct and which 
exposes such measureless inequality in the writings. 
It is only necessary to read Bacon, especially his spec- 
ulative works, to see that it does exist, not simply to 
some degree but absolutely. In Bacon the quotations 
are the prominent feature which immediately catch the 
attention. I have found as many as fourteen on one 
page. In Shakespeare we feel that such an instance 
could hardly fail to disturb the harmony and mar the 
purity of the perfect work. Shakespeare could only 
have borrowed from those poorer than himself. 

Such an unlikeness in the writings of the same 



32 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

author, in this particular alone, is hardly possible even 
with the most studied care and intention ; but conceding 
that possibility, the motive is still wanting. The least 
that such an argument could assume would be that 
Bacon had bestowed great care upon the plays, and had 
felt a fondness for the work. Both of these assump- 
tions, however, are contradicted by Bacon's own testi- 
mony and by all the facts. He never claimed the plays, 
and did nothing toward preserving and publishing them, 
and he wrote most contemptuously of the stage. 

I think the contrast between them in this respect is 
not explainable upon any supposition that one brain 
produced Shakespeare's plays and Bacon's works. It is 
not possible that Bacon could have completely dropped 
the habit which is so conspicuous in all his writings, 
had he wished to ; and it is equally unreasonable to sup- 
pose a desire on his part to avoid an art in which he 
excelled, and of which he was evidently very vain. I 
do not think he could have written anything on ethics 
without such prompting and suggestion ; indeed, I think 
it was his memory rather than his mind that did most 
of his writing. It is not possible that Bacon could 
have been as superior to himself as Shakespeare is su- 
perior to Bacon's known works ; and it is not possible 
that Bacon could have had the genius and power to 
write the Shakespeare plays, and have been considered 
" not deep " by a woman of Queen Elizabeth's penetra- 
tion. She also made great pretension to learning ; wrote 
and translated books, and made ready replies in Greek 
and Latin. 

Bacon was in all things antagonistic to Shakespeare's 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 33 

genius and theories. He has furnished evidence at 
every point that he was not the author of the plays. 
He had no love for the theatre, but regarded it with 
great disfavor and wrote most disparagingly of it. In 
one place he says, " Though the thing itself be disrepu- 
table in the profession of it, yet it is excellent as a dis- 
cipline ; we mean the action of the theatre." Again, 
" Dramatic poetry, which has the theatre for its world, 
would be of excellent use if it were sound ; for the dis- 
cipline and corruption of the theatre is of very great 
consequence. Now, of this corruption we have enough. 
Modern play acting is but a toy except when it is too 
biting and satirical, but the ancients used it as a means 
of educating men's minds to virtue ; and certain it is, 
though a great secret in nature, that men's minds in 
company are more open to affections and impressions 
than when alone." 

Again he gives his pedantic estimate of its proper pur- 
pose and use in language so far removed from any sign 
of interest in or enjoyment of it, that this paragraph 
alone should deny him any claim to dramatic sense or 
feeling. 

He writes : " I mean stage playing ; an act which 
strengthens the memory, regulates the tone and effect 
of the voice and pronunciation, teaches a decent carriage 
of the countenance and gesture, gives not a little assur- 
ance, and accustoms young men to bear being looked 
at." 

That is Bacon's summing up of the utility of stage 
acting. It was a " thing," and was disreputable as a 
profession. Modern theatres were a corruption of which 
3 



34 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

they had enough ; and acting in Shakespeare's time was 
a toy except when it became too much of a satire. 

The only excuse for its existence was the use the 
ancients had made of it. The first tragedy written in 
the English language was performed during Queen 
Elizabeth's reign. Up to a short time previous to this, 
only scriptural plays had been given. Bacon evidently 
referred to that kind of stage acting as the sound use to 
which the ancients had devoted the stage. He wanted 
it to preach a sermon ; and as it did not do that, the 
only good that he could find in it was as a school of elo- 
cution. It strengthened the memory — of course commit- 
ting the roles would catch his matter-of-fact attention — 
and he could appreciate the benefit to the memory. 

At that time Shakespeare's plays were not only new 
but it was a new epoch for the stage. Bacon's Ancients 
had departed, and in their place appeared the genius, 
poetry and humor of living men to " hold the mirror 
up to nature." One can only try to imagine the won- 
der, surprise and joy of the audiences. Even now, when 
we have seen and read the plays until we know them 
almost as well as the actors, they still possess us to the 
extent that disillusion is never welcome. Then what a 
niggard comprehension of the drama must a man have 
had who after seeing Shakespeare's plays could write 
that the "thing" "play acting strengthens the mem- 
ory," teaches young men to bear being looked at, is cor- 
rupt and not sound as it was with the ancients who 
used it to educate men's minds to virtue ! 

It is not of any consequence what Bacon's opinion 
of the stage was (there never lived a man of his stamp 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 35 

that did not disapprove of it), except as to the bearing 
it has upon the subject of the authorship. At that 
time, when Shakespeare's plays were coming upon the 
stage, Bacon had no more appreciation of their incom- 
parable beauty or sense of their marvellous dramatic 
merit than a sneer at the stage, which he dismissed 
with a few paragraphs of contemptuous drivel. 

If he had ever written for the stage, he would not 
have bestowed so little attention upon it in his works, 
and certainly would not have stigmatized it as corrupt ; 
neither would he have preferred the ancient stage if 
his own plays were being acted on the modern. If he 
had written plays, they would have been plays of the 
character he described, which the ancients used to per- 
form. The kind of a play that Bacon might have 
written, and which would not have been a " toy " or 
" too biting," and which would have been " so und," is 
set forth in his New Atlantis, the only imaginative (?) 
story that he ever wrote of which I intend to speak. 

If Bacon had produced the Shakespeare plays, he 
would have spoken of them as seen from the stage, and 
would not have been so un appreciative of their power 
as to attribute the effect of the acting to the " great 
secret in nature" that people are more affected in a body 
than singly. He was not the man to belittle his own 
work, and especially if he had any interest in its suc- 
cess. If he had remained entirely silent about the 
stage, his admirers might have discovered that to be a 
part of the scheme of concealment, as though he had 
avoided the subject intentionally; but the apparently 
careless manner in which he mentions the subject and 



36 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

occasionally recurs .to it, and so quickly disposes of it 
with such commonplace and superficial comments — all 
in perfect keeping with his grave and lofty " Francis 
of Verulam thought thus " — indicates that the subject 
did not interest him. One cannot imagine the writer 
of these plays indifferent about their appearance upon 
the stage, and it is not possible that a man could feel 
any interest in the stage and write of it as Bacon does. 

The test of a play is its presentation on the stage. 
This is the thought to which the writer addresses him- 
self. He has as defined an idea of all the details of 
the stage setting as about the plot and the sentiment. 
His characters are realities, who must play their parts 
as he conceives them, and therefore his business is not 
finished with his manuscript. There is, perhaps, noth- 
ing that expresses this as forcibly as a play within a 
play, as Hamlet, where he instructs the actors how they 
shall speak and what faults they shall avoid, and the 
" Critic/ 5 in which the author is present at the rehears- 
als. That is the solicitude for the effect of the play. 
It is the fear that it may be marred in the acting. 
Aside from the desire to avoid faults common to the 
stage, an author has a taste and fancy about his work 
which he may fear the text does not fully convey. 

Bacon's expressions in regard to the stage taken in 
their most favorable light would denote a contemptuous 
unconcern. My belief is that he would have been an 
active enemy to the stage if the court had not protected 
it, and I shall show by his essay on Masques and Tri- 
umphs that he only tolerated such "toys" because 
" princes will have them." 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 37 

There was nothing in the theatre or in amusements 
that appealed to his nature. To him the theatre was 
frivolous. He was engaged in realities. That there 
could be instruction in anything but a discourse or v 
essay, and particularly in anything as disreputable as 
the theatre, in his time, he probably never suspected. 

If, however, the actors could have personated such 
characters as he has created (?) in the New Atlantis, 
where there is " no touch of love," and the women are 
not permitted to speak, with dialogues full of flattery 
of kings and princes, interspersed with homilies upon 
artificial virtue and soliloquies of crafty wisdom, then 
Bacon's plays might have been presented ; but it 
would have been the death, and not the birth, of the 
drama. 

In Bacon's time there was a kind of dramatic per- 
formance, called Masques, which was quite popular at 
court. The ladies and gentlemen of the court took 
part, and persons were hired to perform the inferior 
roles. It is said that Ben Jonson and the leading 
dramatists wrote for them, but Shakespeare did not. 
Bacon has written an essay upon these performances, 
which is similar to what I have quoted from his other 
writings. Indeed, I have never found an expression 
in his writings at variance with these opinions in re- 
gard to the theatre. Even in his Novum Organum he 
has created a department which he calls " idols of the 
theatre. True they have no reference to the stage, 
but the name of the theatre is applied to them as con- 
demnatory. As he is writing of science, I think his 
inborn repugnance to the stage suggests to him the fit- 



38 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

ness of the term theatre to describe that which is to 
him impure. He says, " The idols of the theatre are 
not innate, nor do they introduce themselves secretly 
into the understanding, but they are manifestly instilled 
and cherished by fictions of theories and depraved rules 
of demonstration." Again he says, " There are idols 
which have crept into men's minds from the various 
dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also 
from the perverted rules of demonstration, and these 
we denominate idols of the theatre ; for we regard all 
the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined 
as so many plays brought out and performed, creating 
fictitious and theatrical worlds." 

If Bacon had written plays, these masques would 
have furnished him an excellent opportunity to place 
one of his productions before the court, where it would 
not have been professional or disreputable, and where 
it would not have blighted his career or stabbed his 
reputation. Milton's Comus was such a production. 
He did not entitle it Comus, but simply " A Masque," 
and it was presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634, before 
the Earl of Bridgewater, President of Wales. Milton 
was eighteen years old at the time of Bacon's death. 
His political career shows that his dramatic genius was 
no obstacle to his advancement, and consequently there 
was no political obstacle to Bacon's appearing as a dra- 
matic poet at these court masques. 

In fact, dramatic writing would have lost him no 
esteem at court. It was not writing, but acting, that 
was disreputable ; indeed, the court was friendly to the 
theatrical companies and interposed to protect them, 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 39 

and contributed to their support on some occasions. 
I shall show this to have been conspicuously true. The 
people who opposed the theatre were not the party in 
power to whom Bacon looked for favors. It is prob- 
able that Bacon's prospects would have been improved 
rather than injured if he had been known as the author 
of the plays. Certainly Queen Elizabeth would have 
rated his mental gifts more highly. Ben Jonson was a 
writer and something of an actor, and was very popular 
among the nobility. He was a guest at Bacon's cele- 
bration of his sixtieth anniversary, and wrote some lines 
relative to the occasion. There is no evidence whatever 
to show that writing the plays would have caused any 
feeling, either in Queen Elizabeth or King James, 
adverse to Bacon's political ambition. They were both 
patrons of the stage, and particularly appreciative of 
Shakespeare's plays, as the number of performances at 
Christmas festivities verifies. 

If Bacon had been a writer of plays, it is singular that 
he should not write a masque, particularly as he attended 
(at least) one and wrote an essay on it. Also, if Shake- 
speare had been his mask he certainly would have been 
conspicuous on such an occasion ; but instead of that, 
Shakespeare does not write for or take any part in that 
kind of a hippodrome performance, and Bacon writes a 
critique upon them, noticing only the grosser parts. 

"of masques and triumphs. 
" These things are but toys to come amongst such 
serious observations ; but yet, since princes will have 
such things, it is better they should be graced with 



40 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

elegancy than daubed with cost. Dancing to song is a 
thing of great state and pleasure. I understand it that 
the song be in quire placed aloft and accompanied with 
some broken music, and the ditty fitted to the device. 
Acting in song, especially in dialogues, hath an extreme 
good grace; I say acting, not dancing (for that is a 
mean and vulgar thing) ; and the voices of the dialogue 
would be strong and manly (a base and a tenor ; no 
treble), and the ditty high and tragical, not nice and 
dainty. Several quires placed one over against another 
and taking the voice by catches, anthem-wise, give great 
pleasure. Turning dances into figure is a childish 
curiosity ; and generally, let it be noted that those 
things which I here set down are such as do naturally 
take the sense, and not respect petty wonderments. It 
is true, the alterations of the scenes, so it be quietly 
and without noise, are things of great beauty and 
pleasure, for they feed and relieve the eye before it be 
full of the same object. Let the scenes abound with 
light, specially colored and varied ; and let the masquers 
or any other that are to come down from the scene have 
some motions upon the scene itself before their coming 
down ; for it draws the eye strangely, and makes it with 
great pleasure to desire to see that it cannot perfectly 
discern. Let the songs be loud and cheerful, and not 
chirpings or pulings ; let the music likewise be sharp 
and loud, and well placed. The colors that show best 
by candlelight are white, carnation and a kind of sea- 
water green ; and ouches or spangs, as they are of no 
great cost, so they are of most glory. As for rich 
embroidery, it is lost and not discerned. Let the suits 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 41 

of the masquers be graceful, and such as become the 
person when the visors are off; not after examples of 
known attires ; Turks, soldiers, mariners, and the like. 
Let anti-masques not be long; they have been com- 
monly of fools, satyrs, babboons, wild men, antics, 
beasts, sprites, witches, Ethiopes, pigmies, turquets, 
nymphs, rustics, Cupids, statues moving, and the like. 
As for angels, it is not comical enough to put them in 
anti-masques ; and anything that is hideous, as devils, 
giants, is, on the other side, as unfit; but chiefly, let' 
the music of them be recreative, and with some strange 
changes. Some sweet odors suddenly coming forth, 
without any drops falling, are, in such a company as 
there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure and 
refreshment. Double masques, one of men, another of 
ladies, addeth state and variety; but all is nothing, 
except the room be kept clean and neat. For jousts 
and tourneys, and barriers, the glories of them are 
chiefly in the chariots wherein the challengers make 
their entry, especially if they be drawn with strange 
beasts. But enough of these toys." 

That is as near a dramatic critique as anything to be 
found in Bacon's writings. It sounds as if he were 
talking of something that he felt no interest in and that 
he knew but little about. It is impossible to imagine 
the writer of that article plotting with Shakespeare to 
aid him in concealing his brilliancy and save him from 
the unhappy results of an exposure of his dramatic 
genius. And yet this is the theory upon which his 
claim is built. 

This essay is faithful to his habitual temper. He 



42 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

commences by calling the masques "toys" and finishes 
with the same epithet. It begins with an apology and 
ends with a shrug. He murmurs at the necessity of 
interrupting such serious observations as his studies, 
but yields because "princes will have such things." 
He shows that he has no knowledge of what he is 
saying, by flatly contradicting himself at the start, as, 
" dancing to song is a thing of great state and pleasure," 
and immediately afterwards, " it is a mean and vulgar 
thing." How a " stately " dance can be a great pleasure 
I do not know, but that is the adjective that describes 
everything that Bacon approves. There is no thought 
or mention of sentiment. He sees it only as a noisy 
spectacle and commends the " dumb show and noise." 
Every material part is noticed. The story of the dia- 
logue is not. The things which catch his attention are 
the " strong and manly voice," the loud and tragical 
ditty, the sharp, loud music, scenery, light and costumes. 
The figures of the dance ruffle his stately muse: they 
are but " childish curiosity." He will not have a ditty 
that is " nice and dainty." He suggests the infusion 
of perfumes, for obvious reasons — does not want -the 
company sprinkled, however — and thinks it all amounts 
to nothing unless the room be clean and neat. 
Contrast his loud and tragical ditty with 

"Oberon. — Through this house give glimmering light, 
By the dead and drowsy fire ; 
Every elf, and fairy sprite, 

Hop as light as bird from brier ; 
And this ditty, after me, 
Sing and dance it trippingly." 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAEE AND BACON? 43 

Comment cannot heighten the contrast between the 
light, elfish and fairy grace of the Midsummer Night's 
Dream and this lumpish critique upon Masques and 
Triumphs. Everything in Bacon suggests its opposite 
in Shakespeare, and not its counterpart. Even the 
mention of the neat, clean room as essential to the suc- 
cess of the masque recalls a sentence from Ben Jonson, 
which gives a speaking picture of a travelling detach- 
ment of Shakespeare's company in contrast with the 
orderly requisites indispensable to Bacon's enjoyment (?) 
of theatricals. 

This sentence is quoted in Fleay's life of Shakespeare. 
Shakespeare's company was journeying through the 
country, and Jonson published a dialogue in the Poet- 
aster, in which he sought to make it appear that their 
necessity to travel w T as due to the inefficiency of their 
play writers, and (referring to Shakespeare's company) 
he puts this speech in the dialogue : " If thou wilt em- 
ploy Marston, who pens high lofty, in a new stalking 
strain, thou shalt not need to travel with thy pumps full 
of gravel after a blind jade and a hamper, and stalk upon 
boards and barrel heads, to an old cracked trumpet." 

Ben Jonson was connected with a rival theatre. The 
picture which he draws of Shakespeare's company may 
be somewhat exaggerated ; but there is abundant other 
evidence of the same nature to show that the theatrical 
profession offered no temptation to Bacon to embark in 
it with a view to money making. It describes a con- 
dition in every respect totally uncongenial to him, and 
heightens the improbability of a pecuniary object in 
play writing. 



44 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

Jonson's fling at Shakespeare, as the writer for his 
company, not only reveals the precarious fortunes of 
the actors, but also exposes the circumstances under 
which the plays were performed, in contrast with the 
neat and orderly requirements which Bacon laid so 
much stress upon. It is a very graphic picture of a 
strolling company. It suggests scanty receipts, a sorry 
equipment, cold meats, a thin orchestra, the roughest 
improvisation of a stage, and any chance building for a 
theatre or shelter ; but I think it safe to assume that 
the rustics who filled the barns where the supposed 
" blind jade " was also quartered had a treat that was 
not disturbed by the perfumes or want of perfumes, 
and the audience that would flock to-day to see the 
player who " stalked " upon the stage with " barrel 
head " underpinnings would not be as critical about the 
surroundings as Bacon. These extracts defining Ba- 
con's attitude toward the stage are as positive as he 
could easily make them. They express both indiffer- 
ence and aversion. They are his carefully-prepared 
thoughts : not what his historians say of him simply, 
but what he has written and scattered all through his 
works, and translated into classic language that it may 
endure to his renown. 

The slighting manner in which he treats the subject 
is simply in harmony with his estimate of the place the 
stage merited in comparison with the questions worthy 
of his thought. Even as a pastime for the court, he 
felt it a compromise with his dignity to suspend his 
" serious observations " to notice it. In this essay he 
does not leave it to be inferred that he has no taste for 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 45 

the lighter and finer parts of the masques, but calls 
attention that he has noticed the things which " do 
naturally take the sense and not respect petty wonder- 
ments." 



CHAPTER III. 

The stage as a symbol — Shakespeare — Bacon — Bacon's Notes on 
Conversation — Bacon's apparatus of rhetoric — The epitaph 
— Bacon's tomb — Bacon as an inquisitor — The quality of 
mercy — Earl of Southampton — Bacon's grants of patents 
to monopolies — Macau lay's estimate of Bacon's character 
— His servility to Buckingham — His pamphlet in favor 
of religious war — His falsification of history — Fairness 
of authorities quoted. 

Instead of a likeness in the writings of Shakespeare 
and Bacon, I find passages that are so pointedly dissim- 
ilar as to appear personal ; for instance : Bacon says 
modern play acting is a " toy," is " corrupt " and " un- 
sound," but the " ancients used it to educate men's 
minds to virtue." Shakespeare says, " playing, whose 
end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 
'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her 
own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age 
and body of fche time his form and pressure." 

The use of the stage as a symbol, as it frequently oc- 
curs in Shakespeare, suggests the work of an actor and 
one whose mind dwells strongly upon his profession. 
The " seven ages " could never have been the thought 



46 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

of a man who uses the stage as an illustration of that 
which is depraved, and false. Bacon, in his Aphorisms, 
describes " perverted rules of demonstration as so many 
plays brought out and performed creating fictitious and 
theatrical worlds." 

To Bacon the stage was a prompt and suitable illus- 
tration of what was false, fictitious and unreal. In 
Shakespeare's mind it embraced " all the world," and 
proclaimed the nobility of his art. 

" Life is a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more. It is a tale, 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." 



" All the world'-s a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players : 
They have their exits and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms : 
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school : And then the lover, 
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad 
Made to his mistress' eyebrow : Then a soldier ; 
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon's mouth : And then the justice; 
In fair round belly with good capon lined, 
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 
Full of wise saws and modern instances ; 
And so he plays his part : The sixth age shifts 



/ 

BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 47 

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, 
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side ; 
His youthful. hose well saved, a world too wide 
For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, 
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
And whistles in his sound : Last scene of all, 
That ends this strange eventful history, 
Is second childishness and mere oblivion, 
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 



" I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano : 
A stage where every man must play a part, 
And mine a sad one." 

These lines evince a familiarity with the stage and a 
fondness for it that cannot be supposed of Bacon. His 
regrets were for the past Shakespeare's belief was in the 
future, and the future has justified him. One who would 
cavil at the degeneracy of the stage would hardly choose 
it as a symbol of life and its "strange eventful history." 

Bacon was as short-sighted a seer of the future of the 
stage and its influence, as of the vitality and power of 
the English language. He chose a tongue that was 
passing out of use to "enshrine" his thoughts that they 
should not perish, and was so wide the mark that he 
needed to be translated to be read by his own country- 
men. While supposing that he was going forward he 
was in reality faced toward the past, and he chose the 
stage as a symbol for the systems of philosophy which 
he disowned and condemned. 

The character of the writings of the two men is so 
unlike that it is difficult to find instances where they 
have treated precisely the same subject. Some examples 
may be found, however, approaching, nearly enough to 



48 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

the same theme to afford a fair opportunity for compar- 
ison. Bacon's Short ]Sotes on Civil Conversations, for 
instance, is addressed in some respects to the same school 
as Hamlet's advice to the players. He did not intend 
it for the theatre, it is true, but in its scope and pur- 
pose it is intended to cover the same general ground. 

" SHORT NOTES ON CIVIL CONVERSATIONS. 

" To deceive men's expectations generally (with 
cautel) argueth a staid mind and unexpected constancy, 
viz., in matters of fear, anger, sudden joy or grief, and 
all things which may affect or alter the mind in public 
or sudden accidents or such like. 

" It is necessary to use a steadfast countenance, not 
waiving with action as in moving the head or hand too 
much, which showeth a fantastical, light and fickle ope- 
ration of the spirit and consequently like mind as ges- 
ture ; only it is sufficient with leisure to use a modest 
action in either. 

" In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe 
or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely and 
rather drawingly than hastily; because hasty speech 
confounds the memory and oftentimes (besides unseem- 
liness) drives a man either to a non plus, or unseemly 
stammering, harping upon that which should follow ; 
whereas, a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth 
a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness 
of speech and countenance. 

" To desire in discourse to hold all argument is ri- 
diculous, wanting true judgment, for in all things no 
man can be exquisite. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 49 

"To have commonplaces to discourse and to want 
variety is both tedious to the hearers and shows a shal- 
lowness of conceit, therefore it is good to vary and suit 
speeches with the present occasions, and to have a mod- 
eration in all speeches, especially in jesting, of religion, 
state, great persons, weighty and important business, 
poverty and anything that deserves pity. 

" To use many circumstances ere you come to matter 
is wearisome ; and to use none at all is but blunt. 

" Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man both in 
uttering his conceit and understanding what is pro- 
pounded unto him ; wherefore it is good to press himself 
forwards with discretion both in speech and in company 
of the better sort." 

Bacon's Aphorism No. 1 . — " Man as the minister and 
interpreter of nature does and understands as much as 
his observation on the order of nature, either with re- 
gard to things or the mind, permit him, and neither 
knows nor is capable of more." 

" Hamlet. — What a piece of work is ^man ! how noble a/ 
in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving 
how express and admirable, in action how like an 
angel, in apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of 
the world, the paragon of animals !" 

Aphorism No. 1 is much more like Bunsby than 
like Shakespeare. 

Considering Bacon's extensive reading and familiar- 
ity with the literature of the day, which must have 
included very much upon the subject of speech and 
conversation, it is singular that he should have thought 
such a composition as his Short Notes of sufficient 
4 



50 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

merit or value for publication. I have read among the 
numerous eulogies of Bacon that his prose is like 
Shakespeare's poetry. Certainly there is nothing in 
any sentences that I have quoted to justify such an 
opinion, and they are not different in that respect from 
others that may follow. 

In his Short Notes he misuses words and uses 
repetition inexcusably. They are ungrammatical and 
discordantly awkward in construction. (The Rev. Mr. 
Abbot, in his introduction to Mrs. Pott's work on 
Bacon's Promus, says, " The errors in the Latin and 
Greek are Bacon's, and are of a nature to make Latin 
and Greek scholars uneasy.") It does not seem likely 
that errors of this kind, which are so noticeable, arise 
from careless ness, for he was a laborious and painstak- 
ing writer; nor is it supposable that he would have 
issued a paper of which he entertained doubts regard- 
ing its value and finish. My purpose is simply to sug- 
gest that the faults are in the nature of the man, and 
that in all his productions there is lacking the nice per- 
ception and rhythm of the poet. 

In all probability Queen Elizabeth must have read 
his essay upon Masques and Triumphs. It was a 
critique upon an entertainment purely of the court, and 
therefore would only interest the court. As she was 
exceedingly vain of her literary acquirements, his 
Short Xotes would also naturally come under her 
attention. These two facts alone would, in the judg- 
ment of some, be sufficient ground for the queen's dis- 
belief in his ability other than legal. His Novum 
Organum was published after her death, and dedicated 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEABE AND BACON? 51 

• 

to King James, who admitted that it was beyond his 
comprehension. Queen Elizabeth judged him by evi- 
dence of such gifts as concern this inquiry. 

In proof that King James' confession of his inability 
to understand the scientific work does not convict him 
of very dense ignorance, see this heading of one of the 
chapters of Advancement of Learning : " The art of 
judgment divided into induction and the syllogism — 
Induction developed in the Novum Organum — The 
syllogism divided into direct and inverse reduction — 
Inverse reduction divided into the doctrine of analytics 
and confutations — The division of the latter into con- 
futations of sophisms, the unmasking of vulgarisms 
(equivocal terms), and the destruction of delusive im- 
ages or idols — Delusive appearances divided into idola 
tribus, idola specus and idola fori — Appendix to the 
art of judgment — The adapting the demonstration to 
the nature of the subject." This was all in Latin, and 
it is doubtful if a trio of men in the kingdom knew 
what it meant. In the Novum Organum Bacon in- 
vented a nomenclature suited to his fancy of the sub- 
ject, but so rude as never to have been accepted by any 
others ; such as, " Idols of the Tribe," " Idols of the 
Den," " Idols of the Market," and " Idols of the The- 
atre," to describe races, individuals, commerce and false 
theories. Under the latter head he included everything 
not his own — in his own words, "All the systems of 
philosophy hitherto received or imagined." He also 
originated such terms as " twitching instances " and 
" lancing instances," because the former " twitched the 
understanding " and the latter " pierced nature." King 



52 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

James' frank avowal apparently cost him no blushes. 
To have affected an understanding of the work or an 
interest in it would only have made him singular, per- 
haps ridiculous. Macaulay says, " The faults of James, 
both as a man and a prince, were numerous, but insen- 
sibility to the claims of genius and learning was not 
among them." 

In book vi. (Devey edition) Advancement of Learn- 
ing, Bacon treats of method of speech, wisdom of 
delivery, etc. Rhetoric he calls " traditive prudence," 
and says of it, "A third collection wanting to the ap- 
paratus of rhetoric is what we call lesser forms, and 
these are a kind of portals, postern doors, outer rooms, 
back rooms, and passages of speech, which may serve 
indifferently for all subjects, such as prefaces, conclu- 
sions, digressions, transitions, etc. For, as in a build- 
ing a good distribution of the frontispiece, staircases, 
doors, windows, entries, passages and the like is not 
only agreeable but useful, so in speeches, if the access- 
ories or underparts be decently and skillfully contrived 
and placed, they are of great ornament and service to 
the whole structure of the discourse." 
! This is certainly the " apparatus " of rhetoric, and is 
mechanical to the plainest degree. Is it not a most 
ordinary conception of the subject of elegant literature ? 
It would, in these times, excite the ridicule of a boy's 
schoolmates. It is too dull for Shakespeare's fools. 
If Shakespeare had written about the doors, windows, 
back rooms and staircases of speech, he would lnive put 
it in the mouth of a Dogberry, and would have mingled 
some drollery with it to make its absurdity amusing. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 53 

The cipher theory has that in its favor that it is on 
the plane of Bacon's genius ; but it is the kind of 
detective work that makes the claimant less worthy. 
It is not a cipher that is needed to make a Shakespeare 
of Bacon ; it is some evidence primarily that he pos- 
sessed to any degree the incomparable poetic fancy and 
dramatic genius of Shakespeare. If he had desired to 
lay claim to the plays, he was too shrewd a lawyer to 
have chosen a means as uncertain and difficult as that. 
He was not wanting in cunning and strategy, and could 
easily have contrived a plan to explode the mystery of 
his dramatic gifts when the gifts from princes could no 
longer be enjoyed. To his champions, however, incon- 
sistency, improbability and stupidity have no weight. 
Some of them go to Shakespeare's grave to find evidence 
of Bacon's work. If such testimony were to be found 
in an epitaph, how much more reasonable it would be 
to look for it at Bacon's tomb ! An inscription con- 
taining a cipher that would reveal a secret might have 
been placed there without attracting any attention, 
which could not have been done at Stratford; but, 
instead of such a thing, this is what Devey says of his 
grave : " He was buried in St. Michael's Church, St. 
Albans, by the side of his mother. A monument was 
soon after erected to his memory by his secretary, Sir 
Thomas MeaMtys, which represents him in a sitting 
posture, with an inscription which strangely parodies 
the sublime opening of the Installation : i Franciscus 
Bacon, Baro de Verulam, St. Albani Viccomes . . . 
sic sedebat' " (sat thus). "A stranger standing over the 
grave of the great regenerator of physical science might 



54 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

fairly expect to be entertained with something better 
than a pun upon one of the most striking passages in 
his writings." 

The cipher discovery seems to me too absurd for 
serious thought ; but there are people who evidently do 
not appreciate its mechanical difficulties. It would be 
impossible for any one but a printer to arrange a cipher 
upon a printed sheet. The printed page and the manu- 
script vary greatly from each other ; but for the pur- 
pose of such a device all inaccuracy would have to be 
absolutely avoided. If such a thing were possible, it 
could not be done without the full aid and co-operation 
of the printer. It would require an immense amount 
of revision, alteration, time, labor and conference with 
the author, and no one could carry through such a 
scheme and conceal it from the compositor. We know 
absolutely that there was nothing of this in 1623. It 
is singular that any one should find it easier to accept 
such a flimsy and impracticable theory than to recognize 
the simple fact of Shakespeare's genius. 

The history of the plays heightens its impracticability. 
Appleton's Encyclopaedia says, " Of Shakespeare's thirty- 
seven plays, seventeen were printed separately in quartos, 
in almost every instance without his co-operation and 
in many instances from copies surreptitiously obtained. 
The text of most of these quarto copies is very corrupt 
and imperfect. In 1623 two of his fellow actors, John 
Heminge and Henry Condell, superintended the pub- 
lication of the first collected edition of his Comedies, 
Histories and Tragedies, from which, however, Pericles 
was omitted. This volume, known as the first folio, 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 55 

contains the only authentic text of Shakespeare's plays. 
But its authority is grievously impaired by the careless 
I manner in which it was printed, and by the fact that in 
some cases it was put in type from the surreptitious and 
imperfect quartos which it was intended to supersede, 
'and the errors which it not infrequently perpetuates ; 
but it corrects vastly more errors than it repeats, and it 
supplies many deficiencies, although it leaves many to 
be supplied. Plainly, too, most of the quarto copies 
from which it was printed had been used as stage 
copies by Shakespeare's company, and thus received 
many corrections which were at least quasi authorita- 
tive. Of the text of twenty of the plays it is the only 
source. The text of Shakespeare's works, excepting 
his poems, was left in so corrupt a state by the early 
printers that, the author's manuscript having perished, 
it needed much editorial care to bring it even into a 
tolerably sound condition." 

It must be borne in mind that when this folio edition 
was printed Shakespeare had been dead seven years. 
It was at least twelve years since the last play was 
written, and some of these plays were thirty years old. 
Bacon was not even in London, but at his house at 
Gorhambury in disgrace. His sentence was proclaimed 
in 1621, and not until 1624 was it entirely remitted. 
It cannot then by any possibility be supposed that he 
had the most remote agency in the printing of the folio 
edition which it is claimed contains a device of such 
exactness as to the paging and number of words con- 
tained on the pages, that by some manner of using them 
a story is disclosed which proves that the criminal, for- 



56 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

bidden to come within the verge of the court, wrote 
Shakespeare's plays. 

It is singular that history fixes the whereabouts of 
Bacon just at this time. There probably was no man 
more notorious than he at that time. He was scheming 
to get back into office, misrepresenting instances of cel- 
ebrated men in history in order to make his offence seem 
less culpable, utterly without shame, and his successor 
trying his utmost to defeat him. The plays were, col- 
lected and published during that time. Twenty of them 
had never been published ; some had been in print as 
much as thirty years, and for many years were used 
upon the stage. The printers cut them, and Shake- 
peare's two friends did their utmost to put them in 
print as nearly perfect as possible. It is common to 
hear regrets that Shakespeare did not publish his plays, 
that we might have them in perfect form : now we have 
a theory that even the careless usage that they received, 
the years of knocking about the theatre, the uncertainty 
as to the genuine and the spurious, and the cutting and 
slashing by the printers, have not even altered or changed 
the text enough to dislocate a cipher that existed in the 
manuscript. Many of the plays, and notably too those 
which it is claimed furnish this arithmetical device, had 
not been in manuscript for twenty years, but had passed 
through an intermediate publication. AVhen it is con- 
sidered that the disarrangement of a single word would 
destroy the whole fabric, and that all these requirements 
must be accurately observed by people who did not 
even suspect that such a weighty secret existed, it 
must be considered the most extraordinary median- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 57 

ical coincidence that ever happened. There is but 
one way of explaining it, and that is, that its inge- 
nuity was so miraculous that no accident or design 
could destroy it. 

While Bacon's writings exist or the record of his 
political career is accessible, no cipher or arithmetical 
device can show him capable of producing the plays. 
If in some musty archives Bacon's sw r orn affidavit 
should be found, asserting his authorship of the plays, 
I should still hear the ramshackle verse of the 104th 
Psalm, and remember that he was a corrupt judge and 
a monumental toady, and that in some cases he had not 
even the honor to perform the service for which he had 
sold himself. Indeed, it is supposed by Macaulay that 
he had carried his venality so far as to accept bribes 
from both sides of the litigation. It is surprising that 
any one should desire to attribute the sublimest creation 
in literature to the "meanest of mankind" (Pope). If 
proofs and evidences of his genius were abundant and 
not to be denied or refuted, then it would be with 
reluctance that I could admit that a man of Bacon's 
character and nature could create characters and write 
a philosophy so utterly unlike anything in his published 
works. I could never feel the same joy in the plays if 
I believed Bacon to have had even the most distant 
connection with them. 

I think Macaulay tried to be just to Bacon in his 
essay upon him, but it is a terrible arraignment of his 
character. He says, "When accused of accepting 
bribes, he assured his friends in the strongest terms of 
his innocence. He afterwards confessed his guilt, and 



58 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

begged the lords to be merciful to a broken reed. He 
admitted that he had no defence, and submitted his 
confession, and said, ' It is my act, my hand, my heart/ 
Mr. Montague has labored hard to prove his confession 
to have been a falsehood on his part, made at the re- 
quest of the king. He assures us that Bacon was inno- 
cent, and that he had the means of makiug a perfectly 
satisfactory defence, and that when he plainly and in- 
genuously confessed that he was guilty of corruption, 
and when he afterwards solemnly affirmed that his con- 
fession was his act, his hand, his heart, he was telling a 
great lie, and that he refrained from bringing forth 
proofs of his innocence because he durst not disobey the 
king and the favorite who for selfish objects pressed 
him to plead guilty. It seems strange that Mr. Mon- 
tague should not perceive that, while attempting to 
vindicate Bacon's reputation, he is really casting on it 
the foulest of all aspersions. He imputes to his idol a 
degree of meanness and depravity more loathsome than 
judicial corruption. A corrupt judge may have many 
good qualities ; but a man who, to please a powerful 
patron, solemnly declares himself guilty of corruption, 
when he knows himself to be innocent, must be a mon- 
ster of servility and impudence." 

Bacon presided at the torture of a poor old clergy- 
man named Peacham, whom he was prosecuting for 
treason, and against whom no evidence existed except a 
few sheets of loose manuscript, which were accidentally 
found in his home when the constables broke in to 
search for proof of libel against his bishop. They 
were not even intended for publication, and had never 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 59 

been preached, but were simply the poor man's private 
thoughts in justification of resistance to tyranny. Ba- 
con fell upon him, and pursued him to his death. 
(One of the sentences in Bacon's collection of Orna- 
menta Ration alia reads, " Pain makes even the innocent 
man a liar," but> Peacham proved an exception.) Bacon 
used all his . ingenuity, even to tampering with the 
judges, to secure the conviction of the old man, and he 
succeeded. The government, however, from "very 
shame at the futility of the charges," did not carry out 
the sentence, but the man languished and died in 
prison. His record in this persecution is simply atro- 
cious. Macaulay : " In order to convict Peacham, it 
was necessary to find facts as well as law. Accordingly 
this wretched old man was put to the rack, and, while 
undergoing the horrible infliction, was examined by 
Bacon, but in vain. No confession could be wrung out 
of him, and Bacon wrote to the king complaining that 
Peacham had a dumb devil." If the old man had 
been a dangerous character and Bacon had been actuated 
by an honest desire to serve the state, it would even 
then have been revolting for an officer of the crown to 
go to the Tower to practice such sickening cruelty upon 
a. suspected old man ; but when we know that Bacon 
labored to influence the judges to assist him in the 
prosecution, and among his printed papers there is an 
admission that pain extorts lies, and not the truth, from 
the innocent, and when the fact is considered that the 
government sympathized so little with his servile zeal 
as to refuse to carry out its own sentence, his mercenary 
and heartless character in the pursuit of court favor is 



60 IS THEKE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

exposed. And yet this cold-blooded inquisitor seems 
to have a following who believe that he wrote — 

"The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath, ft is twice blessed ; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown. 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 
But mercy is above this sceptred sway, 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 
It is an attribute of God himself; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
When mercy seasons justice." 

There has never been a scrap of evidence to show 
that the poet who wrote these lines had any fellowship 
or personal acquaintance with Bacon. If theories that 
have nothing but supposable probability for a foundation 
were admissible, I might suggest the influence of Bacon 
about the court as one of the causes that shortened 
Shakespeare's career on the stage, and decided his return 
to Stratford. 

Macaulay says, " His faults were — we write it with 
pain — coldness of heart and meanness of spirit. He 
seems to have been incapable of feeling strong affection, 
of facing great dangers, of making great sacrifices. 
His desires were set on things below. Wealth, prece- 
dence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, 
large houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massive service 
of plate, gay hangings, curious cabinets, had as great 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 61 

attractions for him as for any of the courtiers who 
dropped on their knees in the dirt when Elizabeth 
passed by, and then hastened home to write to the king 
of Scots that her grace seemed to be breaking fast. For 
these objects he stooped to everything and endured 
everything. For these he had sued in the humblest 
manner ; and when unjustly and ungraciously repulsed, 
had thanked those who had repulsed him, and had be- 
gun to sue again. For these objects, as soon as he 
found that the smallest show of independence in Parlia- 
ment was offensive to the queen, he had abased himself 
in the dust before her, and implored forgiveness in 
terms better suited to a convicted thief than a knight 
of the shire. For these he joined and for these he for- 
sook Lord Essex. He continued to plead his patron's 
cause with the queen as long as he thought that by 
pleading that cause he might serve himself. Nay, he 
went further; for his feelings, though not warm, were 
kind : he pleaded that cause as long as he thought he 
could plead it without injury to himself. But when it 
became evident that Essex was going headlong to his 
ruin, Bacon began to tremble for his own fortunes. 
What he had to fear would not have been very alarm- 
ing to a man of lofty character. It was not death. It 
was not imprisonment. It was the loss of court favor. 
It was the being left behind by others in the career of 
ambition. When once he had determined to act against 
his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he acted 
with more zeal than would have been necessary or 
justifiable if he had been employed by a stranger. 
He exerted his professional talents to shed the earl's 



62 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

blood, and his literary talents to blacken the earl's 
memory." 

Essex had given Bacon Twickenham Court (a place 
so beautiful that Bacon called it Garden of Paradise) 
simply in compensation for his disappointment at not 
being able to procure him some government post that 
had been vacant. He was under no obligation to him 
whatever, but Essex seems to have been the one man 
who for a long time had a sincere friendship for Bacon. 
This was purely the gift of a man of generous nature 
to another whose real character he did not suspect. 
Essex had even urged Bacon's suit with a rich widow 
when he thought of making his fortune by marriage ; 
unsuccessfully, however, as she, having read his Essay 
on Love, did not believe him capable of such a passion. 
In the trials he attacked Essex, who was not allowed 
counsel, with such venom that he interrupted Bacon 
and called upon him to quit the part of an advocate and 
come forward as a witness. 

It is worthy of mention that Shakespeare's friend 
the Earl of Southampton — to whom he dedicated his 
Venus and Adonis and Lucrece — was arraigned, con- 
victed and sentenced with the Earl of Essex. The 
queen spared Southampton's life, and he was a prisoner 
in the Tower at the time of her death. He was liber- 
ated upon the accession of James to the English throne. 
It does not add anything to the probability of any mer- 
cantile transactions or secret understanding between 
Shakespeare and Bacon that Bacon should have been 
such an active and mortal enemy of Shakespeare's friend 
and patron in this political episode. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 63 

Macaulay says of Bacon, " He was one of the last of 
the tools of power who persisted in a practice the most 
barbarous and the most absurd that has ever disgraced 
jurisprudence, — a practice of which, in the preceding 
generation^ Elizabeth and her ministers had been 
ashamed. The practice of torturing prisoners was then 
generally acknowledged to be illegal, and was execrated 
by the public as barbarous. Queen Elizabeth in her 
reign had issued an order positively forbidding the tor- 
turing of prisoners under any pretence whatever. Bacon 
far behind his age ! Bacon clinging to exploded abuses ! 
Bacon withstanding the progress of improvement! 
Bacon struggling to push back the human mind !" 

During the time he held the great seal he was the 
willing instrument of a ring of public plunderers, and 
granted infamous monopolies to the court favorites 
equal to any of the like conspiracies that have become 
notorious among our modern politicians. Macaulay : 
" Having assisted the patentees to obtain this monopoly, 
Bacon assisted them also in the steps which they took 
to guard it. He committed several people to close con- 
finement for disobeying his tyrannical edicts. The pat- 
entees were armed with powers as great as have ever 
been given to farmers of the revenue in the worst-gov- 
erned countries. They were authorized to search houses 
and arrest interlopers, and these formidable powers were 
used for purposes viler than even those for which they 
were given — for the wreaking of old grudges and for 
the corrupting of female chastity. The man who 
stooped to render such services to others was not likely 
to be scrupulous as to the means by which he enriched 



64 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

himself. He and his dependents accepted large presents 
from persons who were engaged in chancery suits. The 
amount of plunder which he collected in this way it is 
impossible to estimate. There can be no doubt that he 
received much more than was proved on the trial, 
though it may be less than was suspected by the public. 
His enemies stated his gains at a hundred thousand 
pounds (|700,000 at that time of our present money), 
but this was probably an exaggeration." 

On one occasion, when Bacon felt well assured of his 
place, he ventured to meddle in some private matter of 
Buckingham's. He immediately discovered his mis- 
take, and sought with the most sickening servility to 
regain Buckingham's favor. 

Macaulay says of it, " It is said that on two succes- 
sive days Bacon repaired to Buckingham's house, that 
on two successive days he was suffered to remain in an 
ante-chamber among foot-boys, seated on a wooden box, 
with the great seal of England at his side, and that at 
length, when he was admitted, he flung himself on the 
floor, kissed the favorite's feet, and vowed never to rise 
until he was forgiven. 

" In return for the remission of the remaining part 
of his sentence, several years after, he requited the 
royal favor by writing two party pamphlets for the 
royal favorite, Buckingham : one entitled Some Con- 
siderations Touching a War with Spain, in winch Ba- 
con strives to excite the nation to make an unjustifiable 
attack upon an unoffending ally ; the other, called An 
Advertisement Touching an Holy War, was neither 
more nor less than a dialogue on the lawfulness of 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 65 

propagating religion by the sword." The strongest 
argument put forth is the treasures of gold and silver 
to be gained by such conquest ; and he cites the Cas- 
tilians' subjugation of Mexico, Peru, Chili and parts 
of the West Indies to make his motive clear. 

His own historian says in the introduction to his 
works, "He could see nothing except through the 
senses, and was disposed to undervalue everything that 
did not contribute to physical enjoyment or tangible 
glory." 

The introduction alluded to says elsewhere, " Bacon 
eve a entertained hopes of resuming his seat in the 
Lords, if not on the woolsack, and did not scruple in 
his letters to James to pervert history with a view to 
establish similar cases of disintegration. 'Demosthe- 
nes/ says Bacon in one of these communications, ' was 
banished for bribery of the highest nature, yet was re- 
called with honor. Marcus Lucius was condemned for 
exactions, yet afterwards made consul and censor. 
Seneca was banished for divers corruptions, yet was 
afterwards restored, and an instrument in the memo- 
rable Quinquenium Neronis.' " 

It is not a pleasing task to copy a mass of detail of 
such discreditable nature, and to seek to show the weak 
and unworthy side of a man's character, particularly 
of a man who was so anxious that in the future, at 
least, his name should be honored, and who in his will 
appealed to the kind judgment of mankind — "For my 
name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable 
speeches, to foreign nations and to the next generation." 
In one sense, particularly, it is less welcome, and that 
5 



66 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

is that it is done in denial of a claim that he never 
made. The authorities which I quote are well known 
to every one interested in Bacon, for they are the peo- 
ple who have written his life and arranged and edited 
his works. They are all his admirers in some respects 
(Macaulay included, as I shall show), and none deny 
him genius. Spedding's much-qualified praise of his 
undeveloped "poetic passion" is not intended as any 
disparagement of his real gifts, for Spedding knew 
that Bacon made no claim to dramatic talent, and that 
he considered it (in his own language) "a culpable 
waste of time " in a man of such scientific attainments, 
and Spedding apparently approved. 

Bacon's political career is a matter of history and 
easily found. It and the philosophy of his essays and 
speculative works, also all the facts and information 
that can be obtained as to the character, habits, interests 
and employments of both men, have an important bear- 
ing upon the subject in determining the question of 
authorship. 

My object is to present Bacon, by his own writings, 
by his biographers, his acts and his critics ; to suggest 
the conclusions and impressions that these authorities 
and- evidences convey to my mind, and to invite those 
interested to an examination of the same data. 

If the extracts which I have made and the facts 
which I have, advanced represent him fairly, he was a 
man of limited fancy, earthly taste, mechanical imag- 
ination and material sense ; and these are not the qual- 
ities that any one attributes to Shakespeare. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 67 



CHAPTER IV. 

Bacon as a "soaring angel" — Advice to the person who has 
incurred the displeasure of his prince — Thrift that fol- 
lows fawning — Extracts from various essays — Essay on 
the True Greatness of Kingdoms — His attitude toward the 
civilization of his time. 

While Macaulay heaps every reproach that lan- 
guage permits upon Bacon's character and conduct, he 
credits him with very different qualities as a student. 
He says, " The difference between the soaring angel and 
the creeping snake was but a type of the difference 
between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the attorney- 
general, — Bacon seeking truth and Bacon seeking the 
seals. Those who survey only one half of his charac- 
ter may speak of him with unmixed admiration or 
unmixed contempt. In his library all his rare powers 
were under the guidance of an honest ambition, of an 
enlarged philanthropy, of a sincere love of truth." I 
have copied this because I think it unjust to cite that 
which is so scathing and to omit what qualifies it on 
the other side. 

If it is true that Bacon's writings were so pure, while 
his acts were deserving of " unmixed contempt," then 
some of my assertions do him injustice. I would not 
presume to dispute the judgment of the great essayist, 
but I may produce some of these writings in evidence 
of conclusions that I have formed, not at all in agree- 
ment with this idea. I cannot believe in such a dual 
nature, and cannot understand how a man's out-door 



68 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

exploits can be so vile while his studies are so angelic, 
as naturally the latter is the preparation for the former. 

In Bacon's Advancement of Learning there is an 
article upon the way in which a man should act who 
wishes to regain the favor of his superior, which follows 
so closely some of Macaulay's descriptions of his ser- 
vility as to furnish an instance of what I mean. 

" ' If the displeasure of great men rise up against 
thee, forsake not thy place ; for pliant behavior exten- 
uates great offences ' (Prov. 29 : 11). 

" This aphorism shows hoAv a person ought to behave 
when he has incurred the displeasure of his prince. 
The precept hath two parts — (1) that the person quit 
not his post, and (2) that he with diligence and caution 
apply to the cure as of a dangerous disease. For when 
men see their prince incensed against them, what 
through impatience of disgrace, fear of renewing the 
wound by sight, and partly to let their prince behold 
their contrition and humiliation, it is usual for them to 
retire from their office or employ, and sometimes to 
resign their places and dignities into their prince's 
hands. But Solomon disparages this method as per- 
nicious. For (1) it publisheth the disgrace too much ; 
whence both our enemies and enviers are more embold- 
ened to hurt us, and our friends the more intimidated 
from lending us their assistance. (2) By this means the 
anger of the prince, which perhaps would have blown 
over of itself had it not been made public, becomes 
more fixed; and having now begun to displease the 
person, ends not but in his downfall. (3) The resign- 
ing carries something of ill will with it, and shows a 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 69 

dislike of the times, which adds the evil of indignation 
to that of suspicion. The following remedies regard 
the cure: (1) Let him above all things beware how by 
any insensibility or elation of mind he seems regardless 
of his prince's displeasure or not affected as he ought. 
He should not compose his countenance to a stubborn 
melancholy, but to a grave and decent dejection ; and 
show himself in all actions less brisk and cheerful than 
usual. It may also be for his advantage to use the 
assistance and mediation of a friend with the prince, 
seasonably to insinuate with how great a sense of grief 
the person in disgrace is inwardly affected. (2) Let him 
carefully avoid even the least occasions of reviving the 
thing which caused the displeasure, or of giving any 
handle to fresh distaste and open rebuke. (3) Let him 
diligently seek all occasions wherein his service may be 
acceptable to his prince, that he may both show a ready 
desire of retrieving his past offence, and his prince per- 
ceive what a servant he must lose if he quit him. 

(4) Either let him prudently transfer the blame upon 
others, or insinuate that the offence was committed with 
no evil desire, or show that their malice who accused him 
to the prince aggravated the thing above measure. 

(5) Lastly, let him in every respect be watchful and 
intent upon the cure." 

I do not know how to read this article and make it 
mean anything less than moral obliquity. It does not 
come under the head of either of the qualities ascribed 
by Macaulay to Bacon "in his library," and least of 
all is it a 'sincere "love of truth." On the contrary, 
without the slightest compunction, with no attempted 



70 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

casuistry, and apparently with no consciousness of the 
evil of the teaching, he advises the man who has 
incurred the " displeasure of his prince" to tell the 
meanest kind of a falsehood and put the blame on 
another. If there is any other way of reading such 
passages — and it would seem as though Bacon's ad- 
mirers and some of his biographers possessed such a 
faculty — then it may be capable of a different construc- 
tion ; but as it is in such perfect accord with his life- 
long attitude toward his superiors, it seems reasonable 
that he meant it and believed it. 

One can easily imagine him to have written it before 
starting out to wait upon Buckingham, and that he 
studied it again before going the second day to sit in 
the ante-room among the foot-boys. 

It is questionable if any writer but Bacon ever de- 
scended to a study of the look a man should assume 
and the gait he should adopt in order to propitiate the 
displeasure of his prince. It was the lack of manliness, 
exposed here, which made it possible for him to thank 
those who " repulsed him and sue again," and the same 
absence of shame and truthfulness that permitted him 
to misrepresent historical characters in order to invent 
precedents by which he hoped to brave out his disgrace 
and return to power and position. And I may be 
allowed to suppose that Shakespeare, who probably 
knew Bacon's character thoroughly, had him in his 
thought when he wrote, 

" Let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, 
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, 
Where thrift may follow fawning." 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 71 

In nothing that he says is there a full reliance upon 
a sure return for a virtuous action or moral principle. 
He has no faith in character. The opening sentence in 
his Short Notes is a fair example of his foxy philosophy: 
* to deceive men's expectations generally (with cautel) 
argueth a staid mind and unexpected constancy." In 
plain meaning : Be on your guard. Conceal your real 
intentions. Never be frank, open, natural or straight- 
forward. His philosophy is the science of outwitting 
others; and much of his essays is simply lessons in 
craft, artifice and finesse. 

In his Essay on Discourse he says, " If you dissemble 
sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to 
know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that 
you know not." 

Essay on Fortune: "Certainly, there be not two 
more fortunate properties than to have a little of the 
fool and not too much of the honest." 

On Negotiation : "If you would work any man, you 
must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead 
him ; or his ends, and so persuade him ; or his weak- 
nesses and disadvantages, and so awe him ; or those that 
have an interest in him, and so govern him." 

Essay on Ceremonies and Respects : " It is a good 
precept, generally, in seconding another, yet to add 
somewhat of one's own, as: if you will grant his 
opinion, let it be with some distinction ; if you will 
follow his motion, let it be with condition ; if you will 
allow his counsel, let it be with alleging further reason." 

Every one who has had any experience in committees 
in public bodies will recognize this picture of the man 



72 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

who always wants to "add something of his own." 
He is the marplot of every body of men who try to 
accomplish any work, and the Baconian idea seems to 
be his way of making his influence felt. 

I do not mean to say that Bacon does not dislike 
falsehood and admire truth, or that he does not com- 
mend all the virtues. This he does ; but in no positive 
manner. In his Essay on Truth he says, " Mixture 
of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, 
which may make the metal Avork the better, but it 
embaseth it." In another passage, " Truth may per- 
haps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by 
day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or 
carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mix- 
ture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man 
doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations, 
as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds 
of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of 
melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to them- 
selves?" In another essay, "The best composition 
and temperament is to have an openness in fame and 
opinions, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in seasonable 
use, and a power to feign, if there be no remedy." 

The essays abound in these half-beliefs. That which 
is false may not be a creditable member of his moral 
family, but it is a useful one, and one that he cannot 
afford to disown or turn out of doors; for in emer- 
gencies, such as that of the man who wants to " cure the 
dangerous disease" and does not want to lose his place, it 
may, in the end, be the only thing that will save him. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 73 

In his Essay on Cunning he is so much in sympathy 
with the subject that I am unable to determine how 
much of it is intended as commendation of the shifts, 
tricks and snares cited, and how much is simply de- 
scriptive of the quality. For instance, he says, " If a 
man would cross a business that he doubts some other 
would handsomely and effectually move, let him pretend 
to wish it well, and move it himself in such sort as may 
foil it." His letters to Essex contain advice of this 
same character ; he writes, " You may serve your turn 
by pretence of it, and stay it nevertheless" Again, " But 
I say keep it in substance, but abolish it in shoivs to the 
queen." Again, "Your lordship should never be 
without some particulars afoot, which you should seem 
to pursue with earnestness and affection, and let them fall 
upon taking knowledge of her majesty's opposition and 
dislike" 

I think Macaulay refers to the Novum Organum 
when he compares Bacon to the " soaring angel." It 
is a work of quite limited size, and treats of matters 
which cannot be compared with imaginative works. 
It is foreign also to any questions of political character. 
In some places it contains the usual disparagement of 
works of fiction and the imagination, which I will 
speak of hereafter. The evidence of Bacon's absorbing 
interest in it is everywhere evident, and there can be 
no doubt but that he supposed it would displace and 
supersede everything of the like character " hitherto 
received or imagined," which he described as " so many 
plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and 
theatrical worlds." Yet his interest in peaceful arts 



74 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

and employments is qualified by such passages as the 
following, from his essays : 

" It is certain that sedentary and within-door arts, 
and delicate manufactures (that require rather the finger 
than the arm), have in their nature a contrariety to a 
military disposition ; and generally all warlike people 
are a little idle, and love danger better than travail, 
neither must they be too much broken of it if they 
shall be preserved in vigor : therefore it was great 
advantage in the ancient states of Sparta, Athens, 
Rome and others that they had the use of slaves, which 
commonly did rid those manufactures ; but that is abol- 
ished, in greatest part, by the Christian law. That 
which cometh nearest to it is to leave those arts chiefly 
to strangers (which, for that purpose, are to be more 
easily received), and to contain the principal bulk of the 
vulgar natives within those three kinds, tillers of the 
ground, free servants, and handicraftsmen of strong 
and manly arts ; as smiths, masons, carpenters, etc., not 
being professed soldiers." 

I am aware that Bacon's idea of the True Greatness 
of Kingdoms, which sets forth his principles on the 
subject of war and conquest, may not interest those 
who are simply looking for evidence of his relation to 
dramatic art; but this subject occupies a large place 
in Bacon's writings and indicates his attitude toward 
the civilization of his time, and properly belongs to a 
study of his character. 

He wrote two papers for Buckingham in return 
for the remission of his sentence : one entitled Some 
Considerations touching a War with Spain, " in which 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 75 

he strives to excite the nation to make an unjustifiable 
attack upon an unoffending ally ;" the other, An Ad- 
vertisement touching an Holy War, " which was nothing 
more nor less than a dialogue upon the lawfulness of 
propagating religion by the sword." These were not in 
any sense angelic papers. He was an advocate of war 
for itself, for conquest, for spoils, but condemned it for 
liberty. He says, " But above all for empires and 
greatness it importeth most that a nation do profess 
arms as their principal honor, study and occupation. 
No nation which doth not directly profess arms may 
look to have greatness fall into their mouths. Incident 
to this point is, for a state to have those laws or cus- 
toms which may reach forth unto them just occasions 
(as may be pretended) of war, for there is that justice 
imprinted in the nature of man, that they enter not 
upon wars (whereof so many calamities do ensue) but 
upon some at least specious grounds and quarrels. The 
Turk hath at hand for cause of war the propaga- 
tion of his law or sect, a quarrel that he may always 
command. The Romans, though they esteemed the 
extending the limits of their empire to be a great honor 
to their generals when it was done, yet they never rested 
upon that alone to begin a war. First, therefore, let 
nations that pretend to greatness have this, that they be 
sensible of wrongs, either upon borderers, merchants or 
politic ministers, and that they sit not too long upon a 
provocation ; secondly, let them be pressed and ready 
to give aid and succors to their confederates as it ever 
was with the Romans ; insomuch, as if the confederate 
had leagues defensive with divers other states, and upon 



76 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

invasion offered did implore their aids severally, yet 
the Romans would ever be the foremost and leave it to 
none other to have the honor. As for wars which 
were anciently made on the behalf of a kind of party 
or tacit conformity of estate, I do not see how they can 
be Avell justified; as when the Romans made a war for 
the liberty of Grsecia, or when the Lacedemonians and 
Athenians made wars to set up or pull down democra- 
cies or oligarchies, or when wars were made by foreigners 
under the pretence of justice, or protection to deliver the 
subjects of others from tyranny and oppression and the 
like. No body can be healthful without exercise, neither 
natural body nor politic, and certainly to a kingdom or 
estate a just and honorable war is the true exercise." 

Of the spoils he says, " The triumphs of the gen- 
erals upon their return, the great donatives and largess- 
es upon the disbanding of the armies, were things able 
to inflame all men's courage, but above all, that of the 
triumph amongst the Romans ' was not pageants or 
gaudery, but one of the wisest and noblest institutions 
that ever was, for it contained three things : honor to 
the general, riches to the treasury out of the spoils, and 
donatives to the army ; but that honor, perhaps, were 
not fit for monarchies, except it be in the person of the 
monarch himself, or his sons, as it came to pass in the 
times of the Roman emperors, who did impropriate the 
actual triumphs to themselves and their sons for such 
wars as they did achieve in person, and left only for 
wars achieved by subjects some triumphal garment and 
ensigns to the general." 

The same idea even more grossly expressed will be 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 77 

found in the Advancement of Learning under the title 
of " A Readiness for War necessary." It is claimed 
by many for Bacon that he was a reformer and a phi- 
lanthropist. No barbarian could have framed a policy 
better suited to satisfy the instincts of savages than this 
essay. It is not war for cause or for defence or for jus- 
tice. He says he cannot justify war for liberty or 
against oppression, or by foreigners under the pretence 
of justice or to set up democracies. He advocates war 
as a profession, for military glory, for conquest and 
spoils, simply to destroy your neighbors and strengthen 
and enrich yourselves. He advises that there shall be 
at least a specious pretence of justification — not for the 
cause of justice, however, but to deceive those who fight 
better for a principle than without it. It is not a pre- 
tence of justice and liberty that he wants, but some 
imagined offence. He furnishes a list of pretexts for 
wars of such a nature, that no government seeking a 
quarrel need ever be without a provocation, i. e., the 
propagation of sect, offences against politic ministers, 
against merchants, and the broils between the nation's 
allies and enemies. Bacon was an ideal politic min- 
ister for such a purpose, and the papers he wrote when 
his life was almost spent show what causes for blood- 
shed he could have been depended upon to foment. 
His historian says of his effort to inaugurate a religious 
war, " The king certainly had his hands full in trying 
to extirpate heresies, reconcile schisms and reform man- 
ners ; but our author was inclined to think a war might 
be undertaken at the same time." The ring of plun- 
derers to whom he granted the patents would at any 



78 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

time have discovered an offence and furnished "the 
specious ground and just occasions as might be pre- 
tended;" in fact it was for the chief of them that he 
made his argument. 

The crowning figure of his harangue, however, which 
he calls " one of the noblest and wisest things that ever 
was/' is the victorious army disbanding and dividing 
the plunder. He says, " These are such great and daz- 
zling things in the eyes of mortals, as to be capable of 
firing the most frozen spirits and inflaming them for 
war." No doubt but that such a sight and such re- 
wards would incite the worst passions of the lowest 
order of men ; but what a heartless and infamous motive 
to describe as one of the "noblest and wisest things 
that ever was " ! The wisdom and nobility of such a 
sight could only appear to a man of the same nature 
and instincts as the soldiers he describes. 

Bacon's life was passed in a time of the most in- 
human sectarian strife. He was twelve years old when 
the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day took place, and 
thirteen when the Duke of Alva returned from his 
frightful holy war in the Netherlands. The horrors of 
"an holy war" and its adjunct the Inquisition w r ere 
known to Bacon almost, if not actually, as an eye-wit- 
ness ; but instead of filling him with abhorrence, and 
ranging him on the side of humanity and progress, he 
regarded it as the true greatness of the kingdom. 

Forbidden to come within the verge of the court, 
and an old man, he spent his time trying to tempt the 
greed of the nation, by the same arguments as are con- 
tained in his essays, to begin anew the bloody work. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAKE AND BACON? 79 

Even the mean old Roman emperor who with his sons 
" impropriated " the booty and gave the general noth- 
ing but some garments and ensigns is readily justified. 
He was in most willing accord with the worst spirits 
of his age, and wrote of Henry VIII. as " one of the 
goodliest persons of his time." He uttered no protest 
or even regret at the abuse of power, but led in the 
wicked race and set up the fiercest examples of barbar- 
ism as the true glory of the people. He was without 
the " dint of pity " or a " touch of nature " that makes 
" the whole world kin." 

If he had had any of the gentle nature that breathes 
in Shakespeare's poetry, instead of exulting over such 
a scene as the return of the red-handed soldiers loaded 
with their stolen plunder, he would, in imagination, 
have retraced the march of the marauders until he 
reached the ruined homes of the stricken enemy, and 
would have grieved at the degradation of human nature 
that could make such cruelty possible. If in these 
days it is thought that the benighted condition of the 
people in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the 
cause of the savage dispositions of their rulers, Bacon 
knew better. He was familiar with noble examples in 
Greek and Roman history, and when he wanted an in- 
stance to compare with the queen's peaceful death, he 
could quickly recall Pius Antoninus, who lived and 
ruled fourteen hundred years before Bacon's time. It 
was because such examples of virtue, justice and wisdom 
did not move his admiration, and not from his ignorance 
of them, that he preferred the worst pagan examples to 
incite the Christians of his time to destroy each other. 



80 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 



CHAPTER Y. 

Bacon's interpretation of " A just man is merciful to his beast," 
etc. — His Essay on Deformity — His interpretation of an- 
other proverb — His habit of generalization — His Essay on 
Friendship — Mode of treatment for the human mind — His 
Essay on Love— His corpuscular study of Cupid. 

It was natural for Bacon to see everything in its 
bearing upon his political interests. He was always 
either an applicant for office or in nervous fear of being 
removed from one. His personal interests were so 
urgent that they colored everything he saw; conse- 
quently the subjects that he treats he brings down to 
the plane of his personal wants. They furnish the 
morals for his essays and the lessons which the 
proverbs convey to him. That which he reads has 
very little signification to him independent of the 
service it may be forced to perform in support of his 
schemes. His general theme is the duty of subjects to 
their princes and servants to their masters ; and the 
rules that he proposes are the same as those which he 
followed in his attendance upon his superiors. As he 
never believed in resigning, he easily found a meaning 
in one of Solomon's proverbs that accorded with his 
view, and taught him the art of a " grave and decent 
dejection" and the " prudent" false accusation. 

Another proverb that he has explained (?) is, "A just 
man is merciful to his beast, but the mercies of the 
wicked are cruel." He comments upon it in this wise : 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 81 

" This comparison has some resemblance to that of a 
prince' and his subjects. A great soul, the noblest part 
of creation, is ever compassionate. Nay, the Turks, 
though a cruel and bloody nation, give alms to brutes 
and suffer them not to be tortured. But, lest this prin- 
ciple might seem to countenance all kinds of compas- 
sion, Solomon wholesomely subjoins : That the mercies 
of the wicked are cruel : that is, when such great 
offenders are spared as ought to be cut off with the 
sword of justice." Whatever the real meaning of this 
saying may have been when it was uttered, it certainly 
was not what Bacon has tried to draw from it. I have 
heard it explained in a way that is instructive, that 
contains a truth and gives mercy no uncertain meaning, 
viz., that the " wicked " is meant to describe him who 
by abuse has maimed and crippled his beast beyond 
usefulness, and made his life a burden to him, and, 
being touched with some degree of pity, mercifully puts 
him to death to end his sufferings ; in contrast with the 
man who ever treats his beast humanely, or the one 
who, having killed the mother bird, out of compassion 
for the helpless little ones in the nest puts them to 
death to save them from hunger and starvation. 

It is not singular that Bacon should entirely miss the 
sense of mercy in it ; for one who could examine an 
old man on the rack and feel nothing but exasperation, 
disappointment and chagrin at his victim's fortitude, 
courage and endurance, could have no knowledge" of 
such a quality ; and it is not probable that he believed 
his interpretation of it to be its true intent, but was 
simply using his own ingenuity in rendering it to suit 



82 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

his personal objects. It may have been written when 
he was trying to destroy Essex, Southampton and their 
fellows indicted for treason, or when he found that the 
queen would not put Peacham to death. He was con- 
stantly engaged in ferreting out treason, and he wanted 
no " impunity " for " great offenders." His interpreta- 
tion of it was calculated to save the fruits of his zeal as 
a servile tool for the court favorites, and he wanted 
authority to sustain his edicts ; but it was entirely such 
necessities that suggested Solomon as having put forth 
a warning against mercy, because he feared that the 
tender care of dumb animals might unduly soften men's 
natures and lead them into an unwillingness to appre- 
hend and punish criminals. 

In view of the jealous and vindictive character of the 
rulers in Bacon's time, and for centuries previous to 
that, nothing can be imagined more needless than a 
fear of mercy or unmerited compassion. In Henry 
VIII.'s reign there were 70,000 people executed for 
violations of law ; in Queen Elizabeth's reign they ex- 
ecuted about an average of 400 a year. James I. burned 
heretics, and it was common to brand and torture those 
only suspected, and political prisoners were not allowed 
counsel. " The common people had generally no knowl- 
edge of many of the laws and penalties, but their ignor- 
ance was no defence. Even at the beginning of this 
century there were 160 offences punishable by death in 
England ; for instance, stealing above the value of 
twelvepence, or maliciously tearing or defacing of the 
garments of a person passing in the street." — Appleton's 
Encyclopedia* 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 83 

It was under such laws as these that Bacon issued the 
patents and assisted with his authority " purposes viler 
than those for which they were given " (Macaulay). 
Could anything be more confirmatory of the inborn 
depravity of his nature than that he could, in such a 
barbarous age, seek to distort such authority into an ad- 
monition against a sovereign's clemency ? It was the 
" great offenders," and not the " army of evil-doers/' 
that were his political rivals. Whereas the proverb 
says mercy of the wicked, Bacon reads it as the mercy 
of a prince toward great offenders. One would not 
misconstrue a precept in that way except with design. 
Suppose he should have applied it to his own case, as 
might have been done at a later period of his life. 
Then it would have been wicked in James I. to release 
him from the Tower and remit his fine, after he had 
been convicted of great crimes. Still the parallel is 
incomplete, for princes in those times did not spare 
subjects out of mercy and compassion, but from fear, 
policy and self-interest. 

It is not the question of the original meaning of the 
proverb that I wish to emphasize, but the bias and 
temper in the nature of him who explains it. One 
finds in it a lesson of mercy that would reach the imag- 
ination of a child ; the other finds in it a precedent of 
high authority to strengthen princes in the execution 
of enemies of the throne, or of troublesome subjects. 
Each, aided by his imagination and fancy, seeks to set 
forth the intent of a saying that has survived many 
ages and is supposed to contain a lesson of wisdom. 
With what purpose and effect Bacon has done this 



84 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

these suggestions are designed to show. In my judg- 
ment it is simply a reflection of his own narrow inter- 
ests, limited imagination and cruel instincts ; and these 
are not the qualities that one can attribute to the writer 
of the plays. 

The quality of mind most distant from a genius for 
delineation of character is that which cannot detect 
individual traits, personal peculiarities, and the shades 
of difference which distinguish the person from the 
class, or which cannot drop its own personality and 
enter into that of its imagination ; and this is a feature 
of the question of the authorship of the plays, not 
second to any other. How far Bacon was able to read 
the human mind, beyond the needs of a detective, 
which a suspicion of courtiers' motives taught him, 
may be learned from some of his writings, in which he 
stamps people with mental and emotional qualities by 
the most thoughtless and arbitrary rules ; for instance, 
in his Essay on Deformity he says, " Deformed persons 
are even with nature, for as nature hath done ill by 
them, so do they by nature, being for the most part 
(as the Scripture saith) void of natural affection, and so 
they have their revenge of nature. Whosoever hath 
anything fixed in his person that doth induce to con- 
tempt, hath also a personal spur in himself to rescue 
and deliver himself from scorn, therefore all deformed 
persons are extremely bold ; first, as in their own de- 
fence, as being exposed to scorn, but in process of time 
by general habit. Also it stirreth in them industry, 
and especially of that *kind to watch and observe the 
weakness of others that they may have something to 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 85 

repay." (Then follows the usual casting up of their 
chances of preferment by kings.) He speaks of them 
again in his Essay on Envy, " Deformed persons and 
old men and bastards are envious ; for he that cannot 
possibly mend his own case will do what he possibly 
can to impair another's." 

In the sense that I desire to notice this kind of 
writing, its worst fault is not its falsity, but that he 
should have had such a dull comprehension of his 
subject as to suppose that the people whom he classes 
together were all of one pattern in such respects. The 
first thought suggested to me is that some aspirant at 
the court, of whom he was jealous, may have had a 
personal defect. He was jealous of his cousin Robert 
Cecil, and I think I have read that he was such a per- 
son. Perhaps he only knew the court fools and took 
them for examples of the whole fraternity, and his 
essay may as likely be the offspring of ignorance and 
prejudice as malice ; but it is more fatal to his genius 
as an observer of human nature to draw such a sweep- 
ing and erroneous picture of a numerous class of people 
from such a fault, than if he had been actuated by per- 
sonal dislike. 

The people who are so afflicted do not need cham- 
pions now, and probably did not then. To say that 
they are all bold, revengeful, envious and "void of 
natural affection," everybody knows to . be the flattest 
kind of nonsense ; and it is not at all improved by 
including all "old men" as "envious." There is 
nothing in his Essay on Deformity worth preserving. 
If what he says were true, it would have the effect of 



86 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

embittering the afflicted people the more ; as it was not 
true, it was pernicious. He says they are scorned, yet 
suggests no compensation and makes no appeal in their 
behalf. There is not the least philanthropic intent. 
If it were an artistic study, or possessed any scientific 
interest, the absence of kindly purpose might be ex- 
cused ; but there is nothing in it worth an apology for 
its existence. Every attempt on his part to write a 
moral or draw a picture ends in the same way. He 
was absorbed in his books and the political excitements 
of his time, and his vision only rested upon those who 
peopled his political experiences. He probably only 
knew the court jesters and their artificial life, and he 
carelessly imagined that all misshapen people were what 
they seemed to be ; or he knew some deformed person 
whom he hated. A small amount of observation would 
have taught him that physical deformity is no index 
of infirmity of character or disposition ; that it is no 
more an indication of moral blemish than physical 
beauty is of the reverse. 

As another instance of the same habit of defining 
qualities by circumstances which do not affect them, 
read his understanding of " A wise son rejoiceth his 
father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother." 
He says, " The domestic joys and griefs of father and 
mother from their children are here distinguished, for 
a prudent and hopeful son is a capital pleasure to the 
father, who knows the value of virtue better than the 
mother, and therefore rejoices more at his son's dis- 
position to virtue. This joy may also be heightened 
perhaps from seeiug the good effect of his own manage- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 87 

ment in the education of his son, so as to form good 
morals in him by precept and example. On the other 
hand, the mother suffers and partakes the most in the 
calamity of her son because the maternal affection is the 
more soft and tender, and again perhaps because she is 
conscious that her indulgence has spoiled and depraved 
him." 

Bacon's faculty was for classification. His first 
thought was to assort the parts of a subject and label 
them. He invented a nomenclature much like his 
"apparatus of rhetoric" in his Novum Organum, that 
may have been useful to the readers of that Avork, which 
it is said " was received with admiration by a discerning 
few, but with scorn by the would-be wits of the time." 
In his essays he proceeds upon the same principle, and 
arranges people in classes and tickets them with prop- 
erties peculiar to them. The following will be found 
among his observations : 

"Old men are envious. Deformed people are all 
bold, malicious and, for the most part, void of natural 
affection. 

" Fathers know the value of virtue better than 
mothers, and rejpice in it more in their sons than do 
mothers. It is the father's management and example 
which forms the son's good morals. The mother's 
indulgence probably depraves the foolish son, and she 
feels the calamity more than the father.. 

" The errors of young men are the ruin of business, 
but the errors of old age amount to but this, that more 
could have been done and sooner. 

"Young men in the conduct and management of 



88 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

actions embrace more than they can hold; stir more 
than they can quiet; fly to the end without consideration 
of the means and degrees ; pursue some few principles 
which they have chanced upon absurdly ; care not to 
innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use 
extreme remedies at first ; and that, which doubleth all 
errors, will not acknowledge or retract them, like an 
unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. 

"Men of age object too much, consult too long, 
adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive 
business home to the full period, but content themselves 
with a mediocrity of success. 

" He that hath wife and children hath given hostages 
to fortune ; for they are impediments to great enter- 
prises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly wife and 
children are a kind of discipline of humanity, and 
single men, though they be many times more charitable, 
because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other 
side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted (good to 
make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not 
so often called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, 
and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands. 

" It is often seen that bad husbands -have very good 
wives ; whether it be that it. raiseth the price of their 
husband's kindness when it comes, or that the wives 
take a pride in their patience ; but this never fails, if 
the bad husbands were of their own choosing against 
their friends' consent, for then they will be sure to make 
good their folly. 

" A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth 
virtue in others : for men's minds will either feed upon 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 89 

their own good or upon another's evil ; and who want- 
eth the one will prey upon the other, and whoso is out 
of hope to attain another's virtue will seek to come at 
even hand, by depressing another's fortune. 

" In the youth of a state arms do flourish, in the 
middle age of a state learning, and then both of them 
together for a time; in the declining age of a state 
mechanical arts and merchandise. 

" Martial men are given to love as they are given to 
wine, for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures." 

I have copied these extracts to show Bacon's habit 
of generalization. Yet some of his assertions are so 
singular that one wonders by what process of reasoning 
or by what experience he arrives at such conclusions. 

It is unaccountable that young men should be so rash 
and headstrong, " stir more than they can quiet, and fly 
to the end," etc., and yet not care to innovate. 

If we accept his view, it never fails that when a woman 
takes a bad husband of her own free will and against' 
the consent of her friends, she proves a patient wife and 
" makes good her folly." 

If it is true that arts and manufactures flourish in the 
decline of a state, we have grave cause of alarm nowa- 
days ; and with such a view, why was it that he devoted 
so much study to this subject in the Novum Organum, 
and why did he attempt such a description of them in 
their perfection in his ideal New Atlantis? 

Perhaps it may be captious to ask these questions. I 
wish to urge simply that his writing is mostly of a hit- 
or-miss character ; he was full of prejudices, and much 
that he wrote was dictated by the idea of the precept 



90 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

that he commends in his Essay on Ceremonies and 
Respects, viz., to " add something of one's own." If, 
in ordinary conversation, one should ramble on in such 
a chance fashion, lumping all people together and then 
dividing them up, in their mental qualities, affections 
and dispositions, by such arbitrary and accidental rules 
as age, sex and stature, he would either claim a large 
amount of indulgence or find few listeners. 

It is so far the opposite of the poet as to hardly need 
a comment, and particularly of Shakespeare. In "him 
there are no types, and not even two fools alike. His 
is a faculty that has no rules, but is as free as the imag- 
ination, that reads intuitively the human mind and 
understands its motives, its reasonings, its humor, the 
impulses that govern its actions, its possibilities: the 
gift that creates individuals and peoples romance w T ith 
a world of characters more real than history. 

Bacon's mind is full of cures, of remedies and of 
'recipes. He would construct and correct everything 
after some precept or prescription. He is so devoted 
to physics that he associates the qualities of the mind 
with the same nostrums that he would prescribe for the 
diseases of the body. He says of Friendship, " A prin- 
cipal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the 
fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of 
all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of 
stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous of the 
body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind ; you 
may take sarsaparilla to open the liver, steel to open the 
spleen, flour of sulphur for the lungs, castoream for the 
brain, but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend." 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 91 

This is a loathsome simile of a beautiful human 
quality, and his conception of the quality was on a level 
with his gross description of it. Such extracts from 
Bacon must constantly challenge comparison between 
his inelegant and mechanical writing and the chaste and 
dainty work of the plays. 

He would have made poets to order after a scientific 
method. He says, " Histories make men wise ; poets, 
witty ; the mathematics, subtile ; natural philosophy, 
deep, moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to contend ; 
studies become habits ; nay, there is no stand or imped- 
iment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies, 
like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exer- 
cises ; bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting 
for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stom- 
ach, riding for the head, and the like ; so, if a man's 
wits be wandering, let him study the mathematics ; for 
in demonstration, if his wit be called away never so 
little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to 
distinguish or find differences, let him study the school- 
men, for they are ' splitters of hairs.' If he be not apt 
to beat over matters and to call up one thing to prove 
and illustrate another, let him study lawyers' cases ; so 
every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.". 

Those who think Shakespeare could not have written 
the plays because he had no great school learning ought 
to be in love with Bacon's idea of tinkering the human 
mind, of patching up its defects and doctoring its ail- 
ments ; for the probability of his having written the 
plays, in their judgment, rests entirely upon his erudi- 
tion. They credit him with the poetic gift upon the 



92 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

same ground that he professes to be able to manu- 
facture it. 

Upon the same theory an artist might be fashioned, 
or a composer or a genius of any kind. You must sim- 
ply discover what he lacks, and as " there is no stand 
or impediment that may not be wrought out by fit 
studies," it becomes only a question of what peculiar 
kind of cramming the defective poet needs. If some 
aged and discolored college archives could be discovered 
which would show that Shakespeare had passed a few 
terms in classic studies, it would be a satisfaction to 
those who cannot believe in his authorship because they 
do not know where he learned to read, but it would add 
nothing of importance. The beauty of his creations is 
in their simplicity, naturalness and originality, — things 
which such studies might have dimmed,, but could not 
have brightened. 

In the introduction to Bacon's Essays by Mr. Joseph 
Devey, M.A., he says, " To rid himself (Bacon) of em- 
barrassment so irksome to men of genius, he resolved 
to make a bold attempt to retrieve his affairs by mar- 
riage. Lady Hatton, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas 
Cecil and early relict of the son of Chancellor Hatton, 
was the beauty at whose shrine Bacon ventured to offer 
up his first vows. (Macaulay says, ' The eccentric man- 
ners and violent temper of this woman made her a 
disgrace and torment to her connections/) But the 
rich widow had unfortunately possessed herself of a 
copy of Bacon's Essays, and finding therein love de- 
scribed as an ignoble passion, fit only for base and 
petulant natures, she ascribed his professions of attach- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 93 

ment rather to her money than her person, and rejected 
his suit. The disappointment was the more severely 
felt, as the young lady capitulated to a rival, his own 
antagonist, Sir Edward Coke, a crabbed old lawyer 
with six children and stricken with infirmities." 



" The stage is more beholding to love than the life 
of man j for as to the stage, love is ever a matter of 
comedies and now and then of tragedies, but in life it 
doth much mischief, sometimes like a siren, sometimes 
like a fury. You may observe that amongst all the 
great and worthy persons (whereof the memory re- 
maineth either ancient or recent) there is not one that 
has been transported to the mad degree of love, which 
shows that great spirits and great business do keep out 
this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, 
Marcus Antonius, the half-partner of the empire of 
Rome, and Appius Claudius, the decemvir and law- 
giver, whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man 
and inordinate, but the latter was an austere and wise 
man ; and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love 
can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also 
into a, heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. 
It is a poor saying of Epicurus, ' We are a sufficient 
theme of contemplation, the one for the other/ as if a 
man made for the contemplation of the heavens and all 
noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a 
little idol and make himself subject, though not of the 
mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye, which was given 
him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing to note 



94 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

the excess of this passion and how it braves the nature 
and value of things by this, that the speaking in hyper- 
bole is comely in nothing but in love, neither is it 
merely in the phrase ; for whereas it hath been well 
said, ' That the arch flatterer, with whom all the petty 
flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self/ certainly the 
lover is more ; for there never was a proud man thought 
so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the 
person loved, and therefore it was well said, ' That it is 
impossible to love and be wise.' Neither doth this 
weakness appear to others only and not to the party 
loved, but the loved one most of all, except the love be 
reciprocal, for it is a true rule that love is ever rewarded 
either with the reciprocal, or with an inward and secret 
contempt ; by how much the more men ought to beware 
of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but 
itself. As for the other losses, the poet's relation doth 
well figure them : ' That he that preferred Helena, 
quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas; for whosoever 
esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both 
riches and wisdom. This passion hath its floods in the 
very times of weakness, which are great prosperity and 
great adversity, though this latter hath been less ob- 
served, both which tonics kindle love and make it more 
fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. 
They do best, who, if they cannot but admit love, yet 
make it keep quarter, and sever it wholly from their 
serious affairs and actions of life ; for if it check once 
with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh 
men that they can nowise be true to their own ends. 
I know not how, but martial men are given to love; I 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 95 

think it is but as they are given to wine, for perils com- 
monly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man's 
nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of 
others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, 
doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh 
men become humane and charitable, as is seen some- 
times m friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly 
love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and 
embaseth it." 

Bacon afterwards married a rich alderman's daughter, 
who probably had not read his sentiments on the " child 
of folly." In order to help his suit he petitioned Cecil 
that he might be knighted, which was done along with 
a batch of about three hundred others. He had no 
children, and his wife was divorced after his disgrace. 

I imagine not many people will need more than to 
read his Essay on Love, to dismiss any thought of his 
having written any of Shakespeare's plays, where " the 
lover thinks so absurdly well of the party loved." 

It is said that all the world is in love with a lover, 
but Bacon is an exception. He is much vexed with a 
lover. To him love is a fury or a siren, and does much 
mischief. It is of more service to comedy than to life. 
It is a weakness. Only two great persons are known 
to have been transported to its " mad degree." Great 
persons and great business do not allow it entrance. It 
is altogether beneath the dignity of great and worthy 
men, who were made to contemplate the heavens, to 
kneel before a little idol and make themselves subjects 
of the eye, which was given them for higher purposes. 
Shakespeare had no thought of that kind, and his plays 



96 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

are full of the little idols who are perfectly bewitched 
by the eyes of mortals, who never seem to suspect that 
they were intended purely for astronomical study. 

" Tell me, where is fancy bred, 
Or in the heart, or in the head? 
How begot, how nourished ? 

Beply, reply, 
It is engendered in the eyes, 
With gazing fed ; and fancy dies 
In the cradle where it lies. 

Let us all ring fancy's knell ; 

I'll begin it, — Ding, dong, bell." 

— Merchant of Venice. 

" Her eye discourses ; I will answer it. 
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks ; 
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, 
Having some business, do entreat her eyes 
To twinkle in the spheres till they return. 
What if her eyes were there, they in her head ? 
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, 
As daylight doth a lamp ; her eye in heaven 
Would through the airy region stream so bright, 
That birds would sing, and think it were not night." 

— Romeo and Juliet. 

" Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light, 
And, canopied in darkness, sweetly lay 
Till they might open to adorn the day." — Lucrece. 

The Midsummer Night's Dream, in utter disregard 
of Bacon's disapproval, makes the whole plot of the 
story turn upon the witchery of the fairy's touch to 
mortal eyes. 

"Oberon. — And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes, 
And make her full of hateful fantasies." 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 97 

Oberori. — What thou seest when thou dost wake, 
Do it for thy true love take : 
Love, and languish for his sake ; 
Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, 
Pard, or boar with bristled hair, 
In thy eye that shall appear 
When thou wak'st, it is thy dear ; 
Wake when some vile thing is near." 



" Puck. — Through the forest I have gone, 
But Athenian found I none, 
On whose eyes I might approve 
This flower's force in stirring love. 
Night and silence — Who is here? 
Weeds of Athens he doth wear ; 
This is he, my master said, 
Despised the' Athenian maid; 
And here the maiden, sleeping sound, 
On the dank and dirty ground. 
Pretty soul, she durst not lie 
Near this lack-love, kill-courtesy. 
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw 
All the power this charm doth owe. 
When thou wak'st, let love forbid 
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid; 
So awake when I am gone, 
For I must now to Oberon." 

This does not suggest any of the dangerous things 
that may befall those who admit love. It even sounds 
as though the one thing that mortals most delight in 
were that which they cannot have and ".be wise." 

There perhaps never was a lover who thought as 
" absurdly well " of the "party loved" as Romeo. Im- 
agine Juliet as a " party " ! Bacon could never have 
had any patience with such folly as Romeo's hyperbole. 
7 






98 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

Carlisle said that " Bacon could no more have written 
Hamlet than he could have made this planet." It is 
even more impossible to imagine him as the author of 
Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet. 

A man who could see nothing but " childish " curi- 
osity in the figures of a dance, who considered love the 
" child of folly," and " works of imagination " a cul- 
pable loss of time, must sit like a bat at such a spectacle 
as the Midsummer Night's Dream. 

" The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings 
A local habitation and a name." 

There is not a hint or suggestion in all that he has 
written, that any thought such as the elfish and fairy 
spirit in which this play abounds ever even caught his 
attention ; nor of the weird conceits of the witches in 
Macbeth. In my estimation of the business of his life, 
it seems to me that the playful witchery and airiness 
of this inimitable piece of beauty and mirth would 
seem to him the veriest nonsense to interrupt his " seri- 
ous observations." 

Bacon has written an Essay on Cupid, which gives 
an idea of his fancy. He entitles it 



PHILOSOPHY. 

" Love seems to be the appetite or incentive of the 
primitive matter; or, to speak more distinctly, the 
natural motion or moving principle of the original 
corpuscles or atoms, this being the most ancient and 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAEE AND BACON? 99 

only power that made and wrought all things out of 
matter. 

" Cupid is elegantly drawn as a perpetual child, for 
compounds are larger things, and have their periods of 
age ; but the first seeds or atoms of bodies are small, 
and remain in perpetual infant state. 

" He is again justly represented naked ; as all com- 
pounds may properly be said to be dressed and clothed, 
or to assume a personage, whence nothing remains truly 
naked but the original particle of things. 

" The last attribute of Cupid is archery, viz., a virtue 
or power of operating at a distance, for everything that 
operates at a distance may seem, as it were, to dart or 
shoot with arrows. And whoever allows of atoms and 
vacuity, necessarily supposes that the virtue of atoms 
operates at a distance; for without this operation no 
motion could be excited, on account of the vacuum 
interposing, but all things would remain sluggish and 
unmoved." 

As Shakespeare had not Bacon's learning, it is to be 
hoped that he did not know of the corpuscular nature 
of Puck, nor that he was not a compound but fortu- 
nately was a particle of things, otherwise he would 
have been obliged to wear clothes. It is fortunate 
also that he did not know of the dangers that beset 
Puck in the shape of the " vacuum interposing," which 
might in some blundering way have made Puck slug- 
gish and bedragged him, so to speak. 

Bacon's essay on the scientific origin of Cupid and 
Shakespeare's personification of Cupid are as fair ex- 
amples of the difference in the natures of the two men 



100 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

as can be drawn. The more one learns of Bacon's 
attainments, his study and investigation, the better sat- 
isfied one becomes that Shakespeare was without them. 
What a horrid thing it would have been for Shake- 
speare to have his fancy clouded by a knowledge that 
the little sprite was a corpuscle, and that some atmos- 
pheric calamity might befall him- that would instantly 
render him quite torpid ! 

We can find something of the idea of Puck — 

" I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
In forty minutes," 

in Bacon, but it is not expressed in the same way. He 
is speaking "drawingly" of hope, as nearly as I can 
make out, and he says, " Nor should we neglect to 
mention the prophecy of Daniel, of the last days of the 
world, 'Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge 
shall be increased/ thus plainly hinting and suggesting 
that fate (which is providence) would cause the com- 
plete circuit of the globe (now accomplished or at least 
going forward by means of so many distant voyages) 
and the increase of learning to happen at the same 
epoch." This is not exactly as Puck expresses it, but 
it is absolute collision compared to some instances cited 
in support of the Baconite theory. 

The charm of all the elfish world is its unreality. 
Bacon would destroy all of that and account for its 
existence upon scientific principles. He would never 
be satisfied with a Cupid that he could not dissect. In 
nothing else is he so far from Shakespeare as in Shake- 
speare's fairyland. These airy visions cannot find any 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 101 

place in his philosophy. The truant and intangible 
nature of the shadowy creatures could never dwell in 
the atmosphere of his corpuscles. The man who can 
speak of Cupid as "the appetite or incentive of the 
primitive matter" could not follow him through the 
Midsummer Night's Dream. It is not the kind of a 
play that a man would write who took a scientific or 
anatomical view of Cupid, or who regarded love as the 
" child of folly," or whose description of love would 
frighten away his sweetheart. He is the only poet (?) 
in history who despises love, and the only one certainly 
whose love-song scared away a fortune and a wife, and 
she, too, a widow with no uncertain temper. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The New Atlantis — Bacon's sketch of Queen Elizabeth — His 
censure of fictions of the imagination — His resolve to 
publish all his writings — Time occupied in writing the 
plays — The Sonnets — Cause of Queen Elizabeth's dislike 
of Bacon — His debts. 

The only thing that approaches a sketch of an imagi- 
nary female character, which I have found in Bacon's 
works, is in the New Atlantis, and she is out of sight 
in a loft, and does not say anything. The New Atlan- 
tis is, I think, his only attempt at fiction. He did not 
finish it ! Rawley says, " His desire of collecting the 
natural history diverted him, which he- preferred many 



102 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

degrees before it." It is not a love story. The dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of the hero is a large family 
and great wisdom ; but as " wise men never admit love 
lest it may trouble their fortunes and make them that 
they can in nowise be true to their own ends," these 
clashing elements do not disturb the solemnity of 
Bacon's romance ; " as for masculine love they have no 
touch of it." The story is a grave and serious study. 
It opens about twenty years after the ascension, with a 
miracle that proves to be a floating column of light. It 
is far out at sea, and the eddies set off from it in every 
direction, so that boats cannot approach, until one of 
the faithful in one of the boats which has been paddled 
out to investigate the illumination bethinks himself to 
make a " confession of faith that the thing which we 
now see before us is thy finger, and a true miracle." 
Then, that one boat is no longer repelled from the mar- 
vellous sight, but is unbound and suffers itself to be 
rowed toward it, whereupon this immense structure, 
some miles high, with a resplendent cross upon it, ex- 
plodes into a firmament of stars and disappears, leaving 
only a little ark floating close at hand, which upon 
being taken in tow is found to contain a letter and a 
volume embracing all the canonical books, and the first 
copies of some other books which (the author admits) 
were not written at that time ; in fact, not before some 
centuries later. 

The letter explains the books, and has miraculous 
power. Hebrews, Persians and Indians can read it 
alike as if printed in their own language; and "thus 
the land was saved from infidelity. Thereafter none 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 103 

but Christians were allowed to land upon the island 
where these people dwelt." 

There is no other form of narrative as cheap and un- 
imaginative as the miraculous. It hesitates at no degree 
of improbability. It sets all natural laws and human 
experience at defiance. Absurdity is not an obstacle, 
and originality not a requisite. If one has not inven- 
tion to plan the opening of a story, or a reasonable 
ground for a theory, he can begin with a dream, or an 
apparition, or a column of light or some astronomical 
freak, and get his tale launched in that way ; but it de- 
notes a dearth of imagination and is barren of original- 
ity. He simply needs to talk about it in an awestruck 
and sanctimonious way ; and though he may be of the 
slipperiest clay himself, his supposed faith in the super- 
natural will be accepted for spirituality. The common- 
place accessories of all such accounts destroy the in- 
tended effect. 

The Mormon birth or resuscitation or excavation of 
their theology shows to what extent people will attempt 
to join the material with the spiritual. The Mormons 
claim that the plates from which the Book of Mormon 
was printed were delivered to Mr. Joseph Smith, Jr., 
by an angel, September 22, 1827, in the woods in New 
York state, where they had been buried fourteen hun- 
dred years. A key was also there, to explain the plates, 
described in this wise : " With the records was found a 
curious instrument, called by the ancients the Urim and 
Thummim, which consisted of two transparent stones, 
clear as crystal, set in two rims of bow. This was used 
in ancient times by people called seers. It was an in- 



104 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

strument by the use of which they received revelation 
of things past or future." Then, after Mr. Joseph 
Smith, Jr., received the plates, he had considerable 
trouble to remove them, for this Mormon angel seems 
to have felt no further responsibility about them ; and 
Mr. Smith finally carted them away concealed in a bar- 
rel of beans, he being overhauled by constables with 
search-warrants, and pursued by ruffians with shot-guns 
and clubs. That is all set forth Avith just as much 
solemnity as Bacon's birth of the community of Solo- 
mon's House. 

The plot or plan of the New Atlantis seems to be an 
enumeration of the things we have. The one thing 
w r hich he mentions that we have not is masculine love, 
and the absence of that is regarded as one of the com- 
munity's blessings. Among the things specified which 
" we have " are " all sorts of beasts and birds which we 
use for dissection and trials, wherein we find many 
strange effects ; as continuing life in them though 
divers parts, which others account vital, be perished 
and taken forth ; resuscitating of some that seem dead 
in appearance, and the like. We try poisons and other 
medicines upon them, as well of surgery as physic. 
We dwarf them. We make a number of serpents, 
worms, flies, fishes, of putrefaction, etc. [Some of the 
diversions of these ideal people are too disgusting to 
copy.] We try experiments in burying some in one 
kind of earth, some in another, some in water. We 
also generate bodies in the air, as frogs, flies and divers 
others." 

This story of the New Atlantis is simply an existence 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 105 

where the people have everything that the author con- 
ceives to be desirable. There is no theatre ! There are 
no plays ! Shakespeare would have had no occupation 
there. I doubt if he would have been permitted to 
land, and I am convinced he would not have wished to. 
This is a description of the entry of one of the fath- 
ers of Solomon's House : " The day being come, he 
made his entry. He was a man of middle stature and 
age, comely of person, and had an aspect as if he pitied 
men. He was clothed in a robe of fine black cloth, 
with wide sleeves and a cape. His undergarment was 
of excellent white linen down to the foot, girt with a 
girdle of the same ; and a sindon or tippet of the same 
about his neck. He had gloves that were canvas and 
set with stone, and shoes of peach-colored velvet. His 
neck was bare to the shoulders. His hat was like a 
helmet or Spanish montera, and his locks curled below 
it decently. They were of color brown. His beard 
was cut round, and of the same color with his hair, 
somewhat lighter. He was carried in a rich chariot, 
without wheels, litter-wise, with two horses at each end, 
richly trapped in blue velvet embroidered, and two 
footmen on either side in the like attire. The chariot 
was all of cedar, gilt, and adorned with crystal, save 
that the fore end had panels of sapphires set in borders 
of gold, and the hinder end the like of emeralds of the 
Peru color. There was also a sun of gold, radiant upon 
the top, in the midst ; and on the top before a small 
cherub of gold, with wings displayed. The chariot 
was covered with cloth of gold tissued upon blue. He 
had before him fifty attendants, young men all, in 



106 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

white satin loose coats up to the middle leg, and stock- 
ing of white silk, and shoes of blue velvet, and hats 
of blue velvet, with fine plumes of divers colors set 
round like hat bands. Next before the chariot went 
two men bareheaded, in linen garments down to the 
foot, girt, and shoes of blue velvet, who carried, the 
one a crosier, the other a pastoral staff, like a sheep- 
hook, neither of them of metal, but the crosier of balm- 
wood, the pastoral staff of cedar. Horsemen he had 
none, neither before nor behind his chariot, as it seem- 
eth to avoid all tumult and trouble. Behind his char- 
iot went all the officers and principals of the companies 
of the city. He sat alone upon cushions of a kind of 
excellent plush, blue, and under his foot curious carpets 
of silk of divers colors, like the Persian, but far finer. 
He held up his bare hand as he went, as blessing the 
people, but in silence. The street was wonderfully 
well kept, so that there never was any army had their 
men stand in better battle array than the people stood. 
The windows likewise were not crowded, but every one 
stood in them as if they had been placed." 

This is a description of the stately entrance of one 
of the wise men of this ideal community. It gives 
Bacon's highest conception of what constitutes an im- 
posing pageant and the homage of the people to one of 
their rulers. Whether there is anything Shakespearean 
in the description or in the spirit of the ceremony is a 
matter of individual judgment. It does not capture 
my fancy to imagine this dignitary " with an aspect as 
though he pitied men," with his bare neck and shoul- 
ders and his hair curling decently beneath his helmet, 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 107 

shod in peach-colored velvet shoes, resting on " carpet 
like Persian, only far finer." 

As he says in his Essay on Masques, he describes 
" the things which catch the sense." In everything the 
absence of sentiment and the sway of the material is 
apparent. His theme, in this description of a perfect 
house, is the creature comforts and the conveniences 
that the people enjoy. One of the details is, " So for 
meats, we have some of them so beaten and made 
tender and mortified, yet without all corrupting, as a 
weak heat of the stomach will turn into good chylus." 

He fills pages with catalogues of what " we have." 
" We have towers half a mile high on mountains, that 
raise them at least three miles high. We use them for 
isolation, refrigeration, conservation. We use them to 
observe fiery meteors, etc., and we have hermits dwell- 
ing there whom we instruct what to observe. 

" We have great fresh lakes and salt lakes, fish-fowl 
cataracts, which serve for motors, also engines. 

" We have artificial wells, fountains, tincted upon 
vitriol, sulphur, steel, brass, lead, nitre and other min- 
erals ; wells for infusions such as ' water of paradise ' 
for the prolongation of life. We have spacious houses 
to imitate thunder, lightning, meteors, snow and hail. 

" We have chambers of health for the cure of dis- 
eases, and baths for the same purpose. 

"We have orchards, gardens, trees, herbs, berries, 
' all kinds of drinks/ besides vineyards, grafting, inoc- 
ulation, wild trees and fruit trees. Their fruit is larger 
and sweeter than its nature, its smell, taste and color is 
superior, and it has medicinal uses. 



108 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

" We raise plants without seeds, and we can turn one 
plant or tree into another. "We have parks and enclos- 
ures for beasts and birds, upon which we practice vivi- 
section. We have pools for fishes for the purpose of 
like experiments. 

" We have brew-houses, bake-houses and kitchens, 
divers drinks, breads and meats, rare and of special 
effects. Wines of grapes, and drinks of other juice, of 
fruits, of grains, and of roots, and of mixtures with 
honey, sugar and manna, and fruits dried and decocted, 
also of tears, or woundings of trees, and of the pulp of 
canes, and these drinks are of several ages, some to the 
age or last of at least forty years. 

"We have drinks also brewed with several herbs 
and roots and spices, yea, with several fleshes, and 
white meats ; whereof some of the drinks are such, as 
they are in effect meat and driok both, so that divers, 
especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little 
or no meat or bread. And above all, we strive to have 
drinks of extreme thin parts, to insinuate into the body 
and yet without all biting, sharpness or fretting; inso- 
much as some of them put upon the back of your hand 
will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and 
yet taste mild to the mouth. We also ripen waters 
until they become nourishing. 

" Breads we have of several grains, roots and kernels ; 
yea, and some of flesh and fish dried, with divers kinds 
of leavenings and seasonings. So for meats, we have 
some of them so beaten and made tender and mortified, 
yet without all corrupting, as a weak heat of the stom- 
ach will turn them into good chylus. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 109 

" We have dispensatories or shops of medicine, and 
drugs in immense variety. We have distillations, 
preparations, separations and percolations. 

" We have papers, linens, silks, tissues, feathers and 
dyes. 

" We have fertilizers [too offensive to describe]. We 
have furnaces, magnify in g-glasses, loadstones. 

" We have echo-houses, musical instruments, bells, 
gunpowder, fireworks." 

If the best marketing, the finest and most suitable 
clothing, perfect sanitary plumbing, mineral baths, all 
kinds of drinks, medicines and drugs, and vivisection 
as a scientific pastime, can make a people happy, then 
Bacon has described a Utopia. 

But lest it may appear that the people have no amuse- 
ments except trying poisons upon the brute creation, I 
will copy the description of the feast which they cele- 
brate. This feast is one of the principal features of the 
romance. It reads : " One day there were two of our 
company bidden to a feast of the family, as they call it, 
a most natural, pious and reverend custom it is, show- 
ing that nation to be compounded of all goodness. This 
is the manner of it : it is granted to any man, that shall 
live to see thirty persons, descended of his body, alive 
together and all above three years old, to make this 
feast, which is done at the cost of the state. The father 
of the family, whom they call the tirsan, two days 
before the feast taketh to him three of such friends as 
he liketh to choose, and is assisted also by the governor 
of the city or place where the feast is celebrated, and 
all the persons of the family of both sexes are summoned 



110 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

to attend him. These two days the tirsau sitteth in 
consultation concerning the good estate of the family. 
There, if there be any discord or suits between any of 
the family, they are compounded and appeased ; there, 
if any of the family be distressed or decayed, order is 
taken for their relief and competent means to live; 
there, if any be subject to vice or to take ill courses, 
they are reproved and censured. So likewise direction 
is given touching marriage and the course of life which 
any of them should take, with divers other the like 
orders and advices. The governor assisteth to the end 
to put in execution by his public authority the decrees 
and orders of the tirsan, if they should be disobeyed, 
though that seldom needeth, such reverence and obedi- 
ence they give to the order of nature. The tirsan doth 
then ever choose one man from amongst his sons to live 
in house with him, who is called ever after ' the son of 
the vine/ The reason will hereafter appear. On the 
feast day the father or tirsan cometh forth after divine 
service into a large room where the feast is celebrated, 
which room hath a half-pace (platform) at the upper 
end. Against the wall in the middle of the platform 
is a chair placed for him with a table and a carpet before 
it. Over the chair is a state made round or oval, and 
it is of ivy somewhat whiter than ours. . . . 

" The tirsan cometh forth with all his generation or 
lineage, the males before him and the females following 
him. 

"And if there be a mother from whose body the 
whole lineage is descended, there is a traverse placed in 
a loft above on the right hand of the chair, Avith a pri- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? Ill 

vate door, and a carved window of glass, leaded with 
gold and bine, where she sitteth but is not seen. 

" When the tirsan is come forth, he sitteth down in 
the chair, and all the lineage place themselves against 
the wall, both at his back and upon the sides of the 
platform, in order of their years, without difference of 
sex, and stand upon their feet. When he is set, the 
room being always full of company, but well kept, and 
without disorder, after some pause there cometh in from 
the lower end of the room a taratan, which is as much 
as an herald, and on either side of him two young lads, 
whereof one carrieth a scroll of their shining yellow 
parchment, and the other a cluster of grapes of gold, 
with a long foot or stalk ; the herald and children are 
clothed with mantles of sea-Avafeer green satin, but the 
herald's mantle is streamed with gold and hath a train. 
Then the herald with three courtesies, or rather inclina- 
tions, cometh up as far as the platform and there first 
taketh into his hand the scroll. 

" This scroll is the king's charter, containing gift of 
revenue, and many privileges, exemptions and points 
of honor granted to the father of the family ; and it is 
ever styled and directed to such an one, our well-beloved 
friend and creditor, which is a proper title only in this 
case ; for they say, the king is debtor to no man, but for 
propagation of his subjects. The seal set to the king's 
charter is the king's image, embossed or mounted in 
gold. This charter the herald readeth aloud, and while 
it is read, the father or tirsan standeth up, supported by 
two of his sons, such as he chooseth. Then the herald 
mounteth the platform and delivereth the charter into 



112 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

his hand, at which there is an acclamation, by all that 
are present, in their language, which is thus much : 
Happy are the' people of Bensalem. Then the herald 
taketh into his hand from the other child the cluster of 
grapes which is of gold, both the stalk and the grapes, 
but the grapes are daintily enamelled ; and if the males 
of the family be the greater number, the grapes are 
enamelled purple, with a little sun set on the top ; if 
the females, then they are enamelled unto a greenish 
yellow, with a crescent on the top. The grapes are in 
number as many as there are descendants of the family. 
This golden cluster the herald delivereth also to the 
tirsan, who presently delivereth it over to that son that 
he had formerly chosen to be in house with him, who 
beareth it before his father as an ensign of honor when 
he goeth in public ever after ; and is thereupon called 
the son of the vine. 

" After this ceremony ended, the father or tirsan re- 
tiret-h, and after some time cometh forth again to dinner, 
where he sitteth alone under the state as before, and 
none of his descendants sit with him of what degree or 
dignity soever, except he be of Solomon's House. 

" He is served only by his own children such as are 
male, who perform to him all service of the table upon the 
knee, and all the women only stand about him, leaning 
against the wall. The room below his platform hath 
tables on the sides for the guests that are bidden, who 
are served with great and comely order ; and toward 
the end of the dinner, which in the greatest feasts with 
them lasteth never more than an hour and a half, there 
is a hymn sung, varied according to the invention of 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 113 

him that composed it, for they have excellent poetry, 
but the subject of it is always the praise of Adam and 
Noah and Abraham, whereof the former two peopled 
the world, and the last was the father of the faithful. 

"Dinner being done the tirsan retireth again, and 
having withdrawn himself alone into a place where he 
maketh some private prayers, he cometh forth the third 
time to give the blessing with all his descendants about 
him as at the first. 

" Then the tirsan blesses each one individually with 
a set phrase — ' Son or daughter of Bensalem, thy father 
saith it, the man by whom thou hast breath and life 
speaketh the word. Sons, it is well with you that you 
are born/ etc." ' 

It is reasonable to suppose that Bacon in imagination 
performed the part of the tirsan. It describes a scene 
and a figure suited to his ambition and aspiration. He 
had an overpowering desire to be wise or to be so re- 
garded, and his fancy always leans to the grave and 
venerable. This story is told simply as a picture of 
Bacon's idea of an ideal existence. 

I have read praises of this paper, but I can only see 
in it the unctuous vulgarity of a nature fond of show, 
ceremony, parade, homage and incense, and barren of 
sentiment, poetry, grace and spirituality. 

There is not the slightest evidence that this feast (?) 
" shows the state to be compounded of all goodness-;" 
in fact it is not a feast at all, but only & feed for the old 
tirsan, and the occasion of it is too vulgar to be hidden 
by the pretence of religious fervor. Such a ceremony 
could only be imagined by a man of earthy tastes who 
8 



114 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

was fond of picturing himself the object of adulation, 
awe and worship. It could have no other purpose. 
If one can forget its selfishness and its disgusting fea- 
tures it ma)- become amusing, but it has nothing in it 
worthy of serious thought. 

It could not be enjoyable to any one but the old 
tirsan, and only one who expected to play the tirsan 
would have written it; and it is most unjust to the 
woman who is stuck away in the loft. As the party is 
the reward for the successful rearing of a numerous 
brood, one naturally resents the banishment of the 
member of the family whose claims to recognition must 
be immensely greater than those of the old tirsan. It 
is a very modest meal for a state to set forth which has 
such abundance of every conceivable thing to eat and 
drink ; and the neighbors seem to partake in a stealthy 
and timid way at the side tables only, while the lineage 
do not appear to get any of the refreshments at all. 
They do not even have seats. In fact, the company 
seems to be invited to see the host eat. It may be that 
the progeny of this old man are stupid enough to be lost 
in admiration of their progenitor, but it is more likely 
that they regard him as a curiosity, and that only the 
presence of the policeman (governor) restrains them 
from poking fun at him. Some of them may be dull 
enough to enjoy the spectacle of " him from whom they 
have life and breath " sitting at a table alone, with his 
back to them, taking his food, served by his sons on 
their knees ; but the " decayed v ones must with "hearts 
distrusting ask if this be joy," and the little three-year- 
old tots down at the far end of the line can hardly be 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 115 

expected to appreciate the nature of the celebration , or 
to look with any great degree of satisfaction or patience 
upon the morsels that disappear at the solitary repast ; 
and I should think they might be sadly in need of the 
mother's care, who is secreted above where she may 
peep through a window to see the father of her chil- 
dren get his diploma and gorge himself for ninety 
minutes. 

She seems to be in disgrace. She gets none of the 
viands, and does not mingle with the company. If she 
is the mother of the whole thirty, she may sit in this 
concealment and spy through the glass at her sons 
holding up their aged father, while the herald reads 
the charter, and she may see the lineage ranged along 
the wall " in the order of their years," and she may see 
her sons ply the old man with the food that the state 
has provided ; but if some other mother may have con- 
tributed a share of the thirty pledges, there seems to be 
no provision for her whatever, and the presumption is 
that she could not even have a hiding-place to peep at 
what is going on. If she were a widow and the line- 
age fulfilled the requirement of the ordinance, and were 
she ever so needy, the state could not provide the 
feast (?), for it is an honor and a debt that the state 
pays only to the tirsan. 

If there is anything in this story that suggests the 
writer of Shakespeare's plays, then I have aided the 
Bacon ite theory in making such lengthy extracts from 
it. It is, I think, Bacon's one venture in the realm of 
narrative, and he had not sufficient fondness for the 
subject to finish it. Rawley says, "He preferred the 



116 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

natural history many degrees before it," and therefore 
he abandoned it. It is so much like his Natural His- 
tory that one can hardly realize his distaste for it on 
that ground. If a story that contains a laboratory, 
dissecting-room, dye-houses, observatories, and in which 
they manufacture thunder, lightning and composts, and 
generate frogs, flies and worms, and in which all the 
affairs are conducted upon scientific principles, does not 
satisfy an author's longing in such respects, what must be 
thought of an attempt to attribute to him such works 
as the Midsummer Night's Dream, Comedy of Errors, 
Much Ado, etc. ? 

Lest some readers may think Bacon had some idea 
of adding amusements to this story, and that there was 
a possibility of the " child of folly " finally finding en- 
trance, I may say that the part yet to be added was the 
legal department. His historians say he intended to 
frame a code of laws for Solomon's House. If the 
treatment of the mother of the tirsan's children and a 
law they had respecting marriage are to speak for him 
as a law-giver, then the world has lost nothing by the 
unfinished construction of Solomon's House. This law 
read thus : " Marriage without consent of parents they 
do not make void, but they mulct it in the inheritors, 
for the children of such marriages are not admitted to 
inherit above a third part of their parents' inheritance." 

The same disposition to see only the gross and 
material side of his subject appears in all his writings. 
Even in his history of Queen Elizabeth, instead of a 
description of her wit, tastes, habits, disposition and 
personal appearance, and such things as have a living 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 117 

interest for the mass of people, his chief stress is laid 
upon her sickness. " In the distemper of the queen 
there was nothing shocking, nothing presaging, nothing 
unbecoming of human nature. She was not desirous 
of life, nor impatient under sickness, nor racked with 
pain. She had no dire or disagreeable symptom, but 
all things were of that kind as argued rather the frailty 
than the corruption or disgrace of nature. Being 
emaciated by an extreme dryness of body and the cares 
that attend a crown, and never refreshed with wine or 
with a full and plentiful diet, she was a few days before 
her death struck with a dead palsy." 

The peculiarities and characteristics of the queen 
who boxed her courtier's ears, and danced measures 
and galliards for her Italian guest when she was nearly 
seventy, to show that she was not as old as people 
would have her, and who " danced so high and 
composedly," did not interest him, and his sketch was 
chiefly a diagnosis of her. 

The time that Bacon would have required for writ- 
ing the plays seems to have received very little atten- 
tion from his admirers. It is admitted even by them 
that no evidence of his authorship exists. His histo- 
rians say he was constantly attended by a chaplain and 
a secretary. It wo,uld have been an impossible task to 
do such an amount of work and conceal all traces and 
evidences of it from persons so closely connected with 
him, and especially considering the care bestowed upon 
his manuscripts and the care with which they were 
preserved. 

Bacon " entered upon the study of the law when he was 



118 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

twenty, and rarely suffered either amusement or litera- 
ture to disturb the tenor of his professional duties for 
ten or eleven years " (Devey). This brings him to 1591 ; 
and from that time forth his life was in full public 
view. 

He felicitates himself, in his Novum Organum, on 
the amount of work he has done under disadvantages, 
and holds himself up as an example to others in this 
respect ; and not only does not refer to any other writ- 
ing, but gives a side thrust at learning that is not 
"sound;" the same censure that he applied to stage 
acting in his essays. He says, Book I., Aphorism CXI., 
" Nor should we omit to mention another ground of 
hope. Let men only consider (if they will) their infi- 
nite expenditure of talent, time and fortune, in matters 
and studies of far inferior importance and value; a 
small proportion of which applied to sound and solid 
learning, would be sufficient to overcome every diffi- 
culty. And we have thought right to add this observa- 
tion, because we candidly own that such a collection of 
natural and experimental history as we have traced in 
our mind, and as really necessary, is a great and as it 
were royal work, requiring much labor and expense." 

CXII. " The particular phenomena of the arts and 
nature are in reality but as a handful when compared 
with the fictions of the imagination, removed and sepa- 
rated from the evidence of facts. The termination of our 
method is clear, and as I had almost said, near at hand ; 
the other admits of no termination, but only of infinite 
confusion. For men have hitherto dwelt but little or 
rather only slightly touched upon experience, whilst 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 119 

they have ivasted much time on theories and the fictions of 
the imagination" (The italics are mine.) 

CXIII. " We think some ground of hope is afforded 
by our own example, which is not mentioned for the 
sake of boasting, but as a useful remark. Let those 
who distrust their own powers observe myself, one who 
have amongst my contemporaries been the most engaged 
in public business, who am not very strong in health 
(which causes a great loss of time), and am the first ex- 
plorer of this course, following the guidance of none, 
nor even communicating my thoughts to a single indi- 
vidual ; yet having once firmly entered in the right 
way, and submitting the powers of my mind to things, 
I have somewhat advanced (as I make bold to think) 
that matter I now treat of. Then let others consider 
what may be hoped from men who enjoy abundant leis- 
ure, from united labors," etc. 

CXYI. " We offer no universal or complete theory. 
The time does not yet appear to us to have arrived, 
and we entertain no hope of our life being prolonged 
to the completion to the sixth part of the Instaura- 
tion," etc. 

Bacon's earnestness in that work is undeniable, what- 
ever the ambition may bave been. The tone and phrase- 
ology is straightforward and unlike the affectation and 
pedantry of his essays. He speaks here of his Novum 
Organum as solid and sound learning, and deprecates 
the time, talent and fortune that " people waste upon 
studies of far inferior value and importance, viz., works 
of fiction and the imagination, which admit of no termina- 
tion and only of confusion." In order to encourage 



128 



IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 



others he reminds them of how much he has done him- 
self, although engrossed in public business and having 
lost much time from delicate health, and he fears he 
may not live to finish a part of his work " which is 
destined for philosophy discovered by the interpretation 
of nature." 

In another place he says, " I determined to publish 
whatever I found time to perfect. Nor is this the 
haste of ambition, but anxiety that if I should die there 
might remain behind me some outline and determina- 
tion of the matter my mind has embraced," etc. 

This sentence, written by himself, that he determined 
to publish whatever he had time to perfect, sounds to 
me very like an unconscious disclaimer to any title to 
the Shakespeare plays. 

As Ben Jonson, Herbert and Play fair assisted Bacon 
in his translations, it is quite probable that Bacon ; s 
regrets at the time, talent and money wasted on works 
of fiction and imagination were directed at him (Jon- 
son). 

Bacon's metaphysical, speculative and legal works 
fully entitle him to all the credit which he claims for 
himself as a man of most industrious habit. Shake- 
speare earned the same reputation. Webster speaks of 
his " happy, copious industry." Would it not then be 
beyond the reach of possibility that Bacon would cite his 
published works as the evidence of a life-time of diligent 
labor, and express a hope and a doubt as to being able 
to finish his work before his death, speaking regretfully 
of the time he had been obliged to lose on account of 
indifferent health, adding his determination to publish 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 121 

everything he had time to perfect, and begrudging the 
time, talent and fortunes expended by others upon 
works of imagination, " which only led to confusion," 
if he, in addition to his published works, was the 
author of works of imagination fully equal in size to 
everything he claimed, his legal works perhaps excepted ? 
It must be borne in mind that, although Bacon was sixty- 
six years of age when he died, the writing of the plays 
did not extend over all that time ; in fact, the plays 
(thirty-seven in number) and the sonnets and poems 
were written within about eighteen years. How much 
time does any one think the writer of those plays had 
for other work ? and how does any one suppose such an 
immense accomplishment could be performed secretly? 

If Bacon had possessed any dramatic ability, cer- 
tainly Ben Jonson would have known it, and he is the 
one whom it would be reasonable to suppose Bacon 
would have chosen as the most suitable to put the plays 
on the stage. Between them there certainly was some 
bond of literary sympathy. Jonson admired Bacon as 
a debater, and also assisted him with his Latin trans- 
lations. Bacon evidently had no sympathy with Jon- 
son's dramatic taste and profession ; but if it had been 
otherwise, and Bacon had secretly been interested in 
such " toys " and feared to have it known, the most 
natural thing would have been for him to take Jonson 
into his confidence and profit by his connection with 
the stage and the court masques. 

I cannot imagine how it can be urged that at any 
time it would have impaired Bacon's political aspira- 
tions to be known as the author of the sonnets or his- 



122 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

torical plays. Can any one suppose that Queen Eliz- 
abeth or any of the persons about the court would have 
found it derogatory to his character or dignity to have 
written the sonnets dedicated to Southampton, Essex's 
nearest friend ? That was the kind of accomplishment 
that commanded high respect at that time. Raleigh, 
Sydney and Spenser are examples. The profession of 
actor was held in low esteem, but poetry was highly 
prized. Authorship, learning and literature were the 
general ambition. In order to sustain the Bacon ite 
theory, it is necessary to falsify the spirit of the time 
and to invest the people with a sentiment that did not 
exist. Probably nothing else could have advanced 
Bacon in the favor of Queen Elizabeth as much as just 
such writings as the sonnets. She cared nothing for 
Bacon. Essex petitioned her in vain for years for an 
appointment for him, "while the latter hung about the 
court." Finally it annoyed her so much that she told 
him on one occasion to " go to bed if he could talk of 
nothing but Bacon." Then he, in concert with Bacon, 
adopted the plan of disparaging other applicants. 
When Bacon was arrested for a debt of £300 to a gold- 
smith, he tried to get her to pay it, and wanted to re- 
taliate upon his creditor by urging that, as he was on 
business for her majesty at the Tower at the time, it was 
a misdemeanor in the man to arrest him. The queen 
on one occasion gave Essex £5000 worth of cochineal, 
and also cancelled bonds of immense amount for him, 
and it is said paid £20,000 of his debts at one time ; 
but she did not heed Bacon's appeal for £300, and 
allowed him to lie in a spunging-house for a paltry 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 123 

debt, and at one time she forbade him to enter the court. 
In the succeeding reign of James I., when most of the 
plays were on the stage, Bacon rose to political em- 
inence, but he never overcame Queen Elizabeth's dis- 
like. As so much is made of his attainments, there 
may be an impression that he held some honorable 
place under the queen, which he feared to jeopard. 
That is not true. The likelihood is that the legal and 
metaphysical bent of his mind and his servility and 
prosy homilies were the real obstacles. His Essay on 
Love was a thousand times more fatal to his connection 
with the court of Elizabeth than any dramatic genius 
could be. The "child of folly" was always a welcome 
guest there, and there were no courtiers who used their 
eyes only for the " study of the heavens." 

It is much more likely that the utter absence of the 
sentiment of the plays, poems and sonnets of Shakespeare 
was the cause of Queen Elizabeth's dislike of him, than 
that such productions would have hurt his standing at 
court. She was not the woman to admire his Essay on 
Love any more than the widow Hatton, or to be drawn 
to a man who could treat of Cupid as a " corpuscle " 
and as " primitive matter," and to explain why he did 
not wear clothes. She employed him to write a justifi- 
cation of the execution of Essex and paid him £1200 
for his services in that heartless proceeding ; but as she 
grieved so terribly that the ring, that would probably 
have saved Essex's life, miscarried, it cannot be other- 
wise than that she thoroughly despised him (Bacon) for 
his part in the tragedy. 

If the plays are claimed for Bacon, the sonnets must 



124 IS THEKE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

be also. If it is admitted that Shakespeare wrote the 
sonnets, then the charge of illiteracy is refuted and his 
ability conceded, and the whole structure of the Baeon- 
ites' myth is destroyed. The ingenious invention of a 
cause for concealment as a playwright does not apply to 
the sonnets, and it does not explain why, if Bacon had 
any poetic passion, he should not have contributed to 
the poetry of the day. A newspaper critic disbelieves 
in Shakespeare, partly because he did not publish his 
plays, because he did "not write prefaces for them," 
and because he did " not appoint Heminge and Condell 
his literary executors." That cannot be said of the 
sonnets, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. These he 
published over his own name, prefaced, and dedicated 
them to his friends. 

" In the year 1593, Shakespeare printed his Venus and 
Adonis. His printer was Richard Field, son of Henry 
Field, tanner, of Stratford-on-Avon, who died in 1592. 
The inventory of his goods, attached to his will, had 
been taken by Shakespeare's father in that same year. 
Shakespeare's choice of a publisher was no doubt influ- 
enced by private connection " (Fleay). 

If this writer uses it as an argument against Shake- 
speare that he did not do certain things in regard to the 
plays, by the same reasoning he must admit it as an 
argument in favor of his authorship that he did do these 
things in other writings; and if it is admitted that he 
wrote the sonnets, there is no argument left against his 
authorship of the plays, and no honest doubters. 

Another striking contrast between these men is Shake- 
speare's thrift and Bacon's improvidence and debt. It 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 125 

is too lengthy a story to give details of Bacon's life-long 
pecuniary troubles. He was always borrowing and 
always in debt. His mother and his brother Anthony 
were continually devising ways to pay his debts and 
keep his expenses within bounds. Those who care to 
get a glimpse into his disgraceful money transactions 
will find some account of them in Abbott's "Bacon 
and Essex." Macaulay says, " After his sentence was 
remitted the government allowed him a pension of 
£1200 a year. Unhappily he was fond of display and 
unused to pay minute attention to domestic afTairs. He 
was not easily persuaded to give up any of the mag- 
nificence to which he had been accustomed in the time 
of his power and prosperity. No pressure of distress 
could induce him to part with the woods of Gorham- 
bury. ' I will not/ he said, ' be stripped of my feathers/ 
He travelled with so splendid an equipage and so large 
a retinue that Prince Charles, who once fell in with him 
on the road, exclaimed with surprise, ' Well ! do what 
we can, this man scorns to go out in snuff/ " 

After reading Macaulay's picture of him, it is impos- 
sible to suppose him the writer of 

" Pol. — Neither a borrower, nor a lender be : 

For loan oft loses both itself and friend ; 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." 

Bacon certainly knew nothing of husbandry as here 
described. 



126 IS THERE AJSY RESEMBLANCE 



CHAPTER YII. 

Court favorites as patrons of the stage — Shakespeare's industry 
— Bacon's manuscript — Bacon's experiment with the fowl 
— Bacon's whereabouts when the plays were collected — 
Heminge and Condell — Globe Theatre — Adverse criticism 
upon Shakespeare — The classics — Bacon and the poem of 
Lucrece — Bacon's marriage — The Prom us. 

"While Shakespeare's detractors stand amazed that 
one of snch obscure origin and supposed meagre oppor- 
tunities should be credited with the masterpieces of 
English literature, they do not seem conscious of any- 
thing singular or unlikely in their theory of Bacon's 
choice of him as their presumed author. If Shake- 
peare was an " illiterate man, a ne'er-do-well, and a 
lounger in tap-rooms,'' it is not complimentary to their 
id«»l's common sense that he should have selected him 
as a proper one to produce pieces which under such cir- 
cumstance- must cause surprise and incredulity. Neither 
the quality nor the amount of the work could have been 
imposed upon Shakespeare's companions by an ignorant 
-or an idle man. 

Consider how unfounded the assumption is that 
Bacon feared the effect of his appearance at court as a 
writer of plays. The Earl of Leicester, the favorite of 
Queen Elizabeth, was the patron of the company of 
players who visited Stratford in 158 7. with whom 
Shakespeare is supposed to have left Stratford. 

Essex (Bacon's benefactor and the queen's later favor- 
ite) wTOte a masque. George Villiers, Duke of Buck- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 127 

ingham (James I.'s favorite, and whose servile tool 
Bacon was), wrote a play, the Rehearsal. If Bacon 
can possibly be supposed to have feared damage to his 
reputation by exposure in the same field of literature 
with the two men whose favor he begged and whose 
gifts he lived upon nearly all his life, then Ben Jonson 
and not Shakespeare was the man to stand between him 
and the disgrace of such genius. Nothing could be 
more absurd than to suppose that the court taste was for 
science or moral essays. Shakespeare's plays were in- 
comparably better received at court than Bacon's writ- 
ings. What Bacon needed to commend him at court 
was the exhibition of such gifts, and not the conceal- 
ment of them. 

I note one writer who does not believe that Shake- 
speare was not a member of the club which met at the 
Mermaid Tavern which was founded by Sir Walter 
Raleigh and attended by some celebrated men, although 
Shakespeare's name does not appear. It seems to me 
that the explanation of the little that is told of him may 
be found in his extraordinary industry. Indeed, the 
voluminous work he did in so short a time is an all- 
sufficient answer to the charge of his being an idler. 
He produced at the rate of two plays a year for seven- 
teen years, besides his other pieces, and travelled with 
his company ; and during all of the time the company 
had to contend with puritanical opposition, and were 
hindered by the plague. The amount of work he did 
not only attests the most unremitting study and appli- 
cation, but it verifies what Heminge and Condell said 
of him, " His mind and hand went together ; what he 



128 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

thought he uttered with that easiness that we have 
scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Such 
work could not have been done laboriously. If he had 
been the roystering fellow that many persist in calling 
him, he would be far better known to-day as to his per- 
sonality ; but in those times people did not seek to dis- 
cover " patient merit," and a man whose whole thought 
and interest were in his art might attract but little at- 
tention and have few friends outside of his profession. 
I think the slurs that are flung at his character are 
relics of the prejudice against the stage which has not 
passed away yet ; and the doubt that pioneers the in- 
credulity has its origin in an unwillingness that a man 
of such a calling shall " bear the palm alone." As the 
world grows to an appreciation of the moral worth of 
Shakespeare's philosophy there will be a recast of the 
judgment of what the stage has done for civilization. 

If Shakespeare neglected to publish his plays, it may 
be accounted for by many suppositions. The plays 
were not entirely new. Many of them existed in some 
form before, and were rewritten by him. Some are 
thought to be only partly his. In the early part of his 
time it is said that Fletcher, Webster, Greene and Mar- 
lowe wrote in conjunction with him. The plots of some 
were old, and perhaps much of the framework was re- 
tained ; and in some cases more than one story was 
woven into a play. A man of Shakespeare's " upright- 
ness of dealing which argueth his honesty" might 
naturally be unwilling to collect the plays and assert 
his ownership of what must have seemed to be the com- 
mon property of a company that had worked together 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 129 

to put them upon the stage. This, of course, is con- 
jecture, and is only worth whatever probability it may 
suggest ; but I can easily imagine a disturbing of the 
comradeship that might ensue from such a course, and 
this, the affection and good fellowship that existed be- 
tween Shakespeare and his fellows would forbid. 

It is a question also whether, if Shakespeare furnished 
the plays and was paid for them, he did not consider 
them the property of the theatre ; and there may have 
been many reasons why they were not published, chief 
of all the expense and doubtful return ; but as no one 
ever questioned Shakespeare's authorship, and no one 
ever claimed them, the fact of the neglect that attended 
them cannot be cited as casting any doubt upon the re- 
puted author. Certainly they were all produced by his 
company and while he was its playwright, and every 
actor believed him the author. 

How different this indifference about the manuscripts 
from Bacon's practice ! He treasured every scratch of 
his pen. The accounts of his petty expenses, the names 
of one hundred and fifty servants, a minute memoran- 
dum of the symptoms of a fit of indigestion, have been 
published. Even the notes, exclamations and appar- 
ently meaningless words that he jotted down for future 
use from the books that he had read, or plays he had 
seen, — at court probably, — and his random scribbling, 
have been preserved in the British Museum. He would 
not have allowed his writings to be handled as these 
plays were ; the printers rejecting, accepting and muti- 
lating them according to their own judgment. Bacon's 
waste-basket was filled with pearls, in his own conceit ; 
9 



130 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

every scrap of memorandum had a gilt edge, as it were. 
One cannot suppose him suffering the children of his 
imagination to lie about in dirt and dust, behind the 
scenes of a theatre, at the haphazard care of actors, and 
caught up finally, by chance and in fragments, to be 
published under the dictum of the printers, and that, 
too, in an insular tongue that he did not believe would 
survive the next generation. 

His love of order alone would have forbidden such 
carelessness with his manuscripts. It is said that every- 
thing that he wrote was kept with great care by his 
secretary in a cabinet in his library. That order was 
his habit, frequent instances in his writings attest. In 
his Essay on Masques he says, " They 'are nothing un- 
less the room be well kept and clean." In the tirsan's 
feast (?) the room is " well kept and without disorder." 
In the entry of the sage they had no horsemen in the 
procession, fearing it would cause disorder, and the 
" street was wonderfully well kept ;" the people did not 
jostle each other at the windows, but " stood as if they 
had been placed." In the 104th Psalm his reference 
to order may furnish to his admirers an overlooked 
similarity (?) to a line in Romeo and Juliet : 

"The moon, so constant in inconstancy, 
Doth rule the seasons orderly." 

The disregard of the value of the manuscripts, or 

delay about printing them, from whatever cause it arose, 

which allowed them to lie at the risk of loss, injury and 

destruction, cannot be reconciled with Bacon's watchful 

, care and preservation of all his productions. ' He pre- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAEE AND BACON? 131 

served even the beginnings and introductions to articles 
that were never finished, and also copies of his letters, 
and directed in his will that all should be published. 

It is singular that any one should attempt to attribute 
to Bacon the things that he so pointedly regarded with 
dislike ; and it is more than singular to think seriously 
of ascribing to him such a colossal piece of stupidity as 
the cipher form of title. If he had wished to lay claim 
to the plays, he would hardly have chosen a way that 
nobody could understand. This manner of disclosing 
a secret by an intricate and unsolvable puzzle is, doubt- 
less, intended to impress people with the great skill and 
profundity of the inventor, but it has only the effect of 
disproving it ; for up to the present time, if any such 
thing can be supposed to exist, the puzzle has not done 
its work, and has only exposed the stupidity of its orig- 
inator ; and so it will be to the " last syllable of recorded 
time." 

When Bacon wrote his last letter, in which he said 
his fingers were so stiff he could hardly hold a pen, he 
mentioned the experiment of stuffing the fowl with 
snow (which caused his death), and said the experiment 
succeeded remarkably well. This letter he wrote when 
he knew he was going to die, and he compares himself 
in it to the elder Pliny, who "lost his life while exploring 
Vesuvius. That was just the time, if he had a weighty 
secret on his mind, that he would have divulged it. 
Just then one line from him that he was the author of 
the plays would have registered his claim, and his rig] it 
to the title would have been proved or disproved before 
Shakespeare's friends had passed away. It would be 



132 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

difficult to find a more marked instance of the " ruling 
passion strong in death " than Bacon's reference to this 
experiment when he knew it had been fatal to him ; 
especially as it supposes that he must have made inquiry 
about it in the meantime, as his sudden illness prevented 
any personal investigation. His interest in that kind 
of investigation was so great that he could only relin- 
quish it with his life, and he made it the subject of a 
letter when he was struck with death. 

It is my conviction that all of Shakespeare's produc- 
tions had less interest to Bacon and less value in his 
estimation than the experiment of snow as an antiseptic, 
and I do not believe that he considered Shakespeare or 
his art of sufficient importance to interrupt his " serious 
observations." Is there anywhere in existence the 
slightest evidence that shows Bacon ever to have ex- 
pressed any interest, pleasure or admiration for works 
of fiction, imagination or art? The circumstance that 
caused his death, and his dying testimony as to his 
absorbing interest in scientific research, are conclusive 
as to the kinds of subjects that occupied his mind. 

The supposition that Bacon wrote the plays and con- 
cealed his authorship through his desire for political 
advancement (although it has no force at any time) 
becomes ludicrous after he was sentenced, for bribery 
and corruption, to " pay a fine of £40,000, to be im- 
prisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure, 
declared incapable of holding any public office, place or 
employment, and forbidden to come within the verge 
of the court." His political career was then at an end ; 
he was sixty years old, and could not hope for any fur- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 133 

ther hoDors. Shakespeare had been dead four years. 
If fear of marring his prospects had previously pre- 
vented him from writing any poetry whatever, he had 
no longer need to suppress his talent y He was released 
from the Tower and exiled in his house at Gorhambury, 
and during this time he wrote the versification of the 
psalms ; the papers advocating a new religious crusade 
and a war for spoils, in the latter of which he described 
the rich mines of South America as the prospective 
plunder — which shows that his disgrace and banishment 
had neither shamed nor humanized him, as this paper 
is consistent with his earlier essays, where he speaks of 
the spoils as the " dazzling things capable of firing the 
most frozen spirits and inflaming them for war," and 
as " one of the noblest and wisest things that ever was." 
This was his situation and employment at the time 
Heminge and Condell were busy collecting the plays 
and publishing them. 

They say in the dedication and preface, " We have 
but collected them and done an office to the dead to pro- 
cure his Orphanes, Guardians, without ambition either 
of self profit or fame ; only to keepe the memory of so 
worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as was our Shake- 
speare, by humble offer of his playes to your most 
noble patronage." " It had bene a thing, we confesse, 
worthie to have bene wished, that the Author himselfe 
had liv'd to set forth, and overseen his owne writings ; 
but since it hath been ordain'd otherwise, and he by 
death departed from that right, we pray you do not 
enyie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to 
have collected and published them." The probability 



134 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

is that these two noble fellows spent years upon the 
work. It was seven years after Shakespeare's death 
before the folio of 1623 appeared, and what they say 
of their " care and paine " is expressive of a great task 
finished, which is fully justified by the size of the vol- 
ume. The world can never repay these two generous 
friends of Shakespeare for their tribute to his memory. 
It is not likely that they will be forgotten ; but they 
deserve an enduring memorial that should fitly record 
the service they performed for mankind, when they 
were simply laboring to pay a debt of love. 

If Shakespeare was so little known in his time, it 
argues that his plays held no very high place in the 
estimation of the " better sort," and this fact is attested 
by much similar evidence. They had no popularity or 
promise to attract Bacon's attention or tempt his cupidity. 

The people who played such prominent parts in the 
politics of that age had no thought that the events in 
which they figured would become so familiar to poster- 
ity from the presence among them of a man whose 
calling they esteemed so little, whose genius they so 
inadequately recognized, and whose period of activity 
was so short. It is true that the plays drew large 
audiences. Leonard Digges, born 1588, wrote in 1640 
that " when the audiences saw Shakespeare's plays, they 
were ravished and went away in wonder ; and although 
Ben Jonson was admired, yet when his best plays would 
hardly bring money enough to pay for sea-coal fire, 
Shakespeare's would fill cock-pit, galleries, boxes, and 
scarce leave standing room." The plays were well re- 
ceived at court and popular among the people. The 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 135 

presumption is, however, that those who wrote the 
political history of that time did not regard the theatre 
as of public interest, and did not expect it to lend any 
fame to their epoch. I have read the following account 
of the Globe Theatre: "It was octagonal in shape, 
and, with the exception of the stage, which was pro- 
tected by a thatched roof, was entirely open at the top. 
The common people could enter as well as the rich. 
There were six-penny, two-penny, even penny seats, 
but they could not see without money. If it rained, 
and it often rains in London, the people in the pit — 
butchers, mercers, bakers, sailors, apprentices — received 
the streaming rain upon their heads. I suppose they 
did not trouble themselves about it. ♦ It was not long 
since they began to pave the streets in London ; and 
when men like these have had experience of sewers and 
puddles, they are not afraid of catching cold. While 
waiting for the piece, they amuse themselves after their 
own fashion, drink beer, crack nuts, eat fruit, howl, 
and now and then resort to their fists, and they have 
been known to fall upon the actors and turn the theatre 
upside down. Above them on the stage were the spec- 
tators able to pay a shilling, the elegant people, the 
gentlefolk. They were sheltered from the rain ; and 
if they chose to pay an extra shilling, could have a 
stool. Thus were reduced the prerogatives of rank and 
devices of comfort. It often happened that there were 
not stools enough. Then they lie about on the ground. 
This was not a time to be dainty." I have no doubt 
but that this is an exaggerated picture of the discom- 
forts of the theatre. Certainly it must have been en- 



136 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

closed ; but if it is even approximately true, it shows 
the improbability of a man of Bacon's stamp frequent- 
ing such a place or feeling any sympathy or interest in 
it or any one connected with it. 

It seems as though the audiences at the theatre appre- 
ciated Shakespeare, but they were not the people who 
have left any record. As evidence that the plays re- 
ceived no favor at that time to attract Bacon, I quote, 
from well-known names, the following criticisms: 
" Shakespeare is a wit out of date and unintelligible " 
(Dry den). "A wit out of fashion, a coarse and savage 
mind " (Shaftesbury). " He had neither tragic nor 
comic talent. Nothing equals the absurdity of such a 
spectacle as the witches in Macbeth " (Forbes). " The 
comic in Shakespeare is too heavy, and does not make 
one laugh " (Foote). " The comic in Shakespeare is 
altogether low, and very inferior to Shadwell " (TTar- 
burton). " Voltaire qualifies the scene of the grave- 
diggers as the follies, characterizes the pieces as mon- 
strous farces, declares that Shakespeare ruined the Eng- 
lish theatre, calls him a barbarian, and wants to be 
delivered from the erring Shakespeare " (Hugo). Hume 
says of him, " It is in vain that we look for purity or 
simplicity of diction. He is totally ignorant of all 
theatrical art and conduct, deficient in taste, elegance, 
harmony and correctness ;" and concludes, " Ever since 
the English theatre has taken a strong tincture of 
Shakespeare's spirit and character; and thence it has 
proceeded that the nation has undergone from all its 
neighbors the reproach of barbarism, from which its 
valuable productions in some other parts of learning 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 137 

would otherwise have exempted it." " In 1725 Pope 
finds a reason why Shakespeare wrote his dramas. 
' One must eat ' " (Hugo). Blount and Jaggard struck 
out of Hamlet alone (1623 edition) two hundred lines; 
also two hundred and twenty-four lines out of King 
Lear. "In 1707 one called Nahun Tate published a 
' King Lear/ warning his readers that he had borrowed 
the idea from a play he had read by chance, the work 
of some unknown author. The unknown author was 
Shakespeare" (Hugo). Tate was born 1652; died 
1716. "He produced an alteration of Shakespeare's 
King Lear, which long held the stage to the exclusion 
of the original " (Appleton's Encyclopaedia). Garrick 
played Tate's King Lear. George III. declared Shake- 
speare " poor stuff." Pepys declared the Midsummer 
Night's Dream the most insipid, ridiculous play that he 
ever saw in his life; Romeo and Juliet the worst; 
Twelfth Night silly, having no relation to the name or 
day ; and Macbeth a most excellent play for variety. 
A book called the Golden Medley, published 1720, in- 
formed its readers that, " if it had not been for Shake- 
speare's Tempest, he would scarce have been allowed a 
place among the dramatic poets." "Addison left 
Shakespeare unnamed in his Account of the Greatest 
English Poets " (June Temple Bar). Greene says he is 
a plagiarist, a copyist, has invented nothing, is a crow 
adorned with the plumes of others. He pilfers from a 
dozen writers, which he names, himself among the 
number. Nothing is his. He is a blower of verses, a 
shake-scene, a Johannes factotum. Thomas Rymer 
says, "What edifying and useful impression can an 



138 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

audience receive from such poetry ? To what can this 
poetry serve, unless it is to mislead our good sense, to 
throw our thoughts into disorder, to trouble our brain, 
to pervert our instincts, to crack our imaginations, to 
corrupt our tastes, and fill our hearts with variety, con- 
fusion, clatter and nonsense ?" I have copied these ad- 
verse criticisms upon Shakespeare in order to show that 
he had no standing or reputation that would attract 
Bacon or awaken in him any desire for fame from such 
a source. The stage promised neither present profit 
nor future renown. 

The improbability of Bacon having written Shake- 
speare's works does not consist alone in his lack of genius 
and interest in the stage. In addition to this, much that 
Shakespeare has written Bacon would not, if only from 
an inborn revulsion against its sentiment. I mean such 
poems as the Rape of Lucrece, and what will be under- 
stood without description. Bacon was vulgar, coarse 
and disgusting (he did not know it), but he was never 
licentious. Some of Shakespeare's broad writing that 
has brought upon him such epithets as immorality, ob- 
scenity and voluptuousness could never be attributed to 
Bacon. His nature was the negative of any inclination 
in that direction. There is no word or allusion of a 
thing of that kind in any account of him ever written ; 
no scandal, no departure from the most correct and vir- 
tuous fidelity to the respect due himself and his home. 
The habit of his life and thought was in the channel of 
correct demeanor and the observance of all forms and 
proprieties. All of his writings have this groundwork 
of virtue and morality. He had not even a milk- warm 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 139 

nature to tempt him to fervent vows and lascivious 
thoughts. He was as free from a suspicion of licen- 
tiousness as a stone image. He courted the widow 
Hatton, by proxy, three months after her husband's 
death. 

Of his wife, the rich alderman's daughter, it is 
said very little is known, except that her name was 
Alice and she had a temper. Satires written at that 
time insinuate that Alice did not share her husband's 
contempt for love's " hyperbole," and that while his 
vision was busy with " higher purposes," the " little 
idol " with a temper found society which preferred her 
to the heavenly bodies that her husband considered the 
proper subjects of contemplation. 

A letter from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain 
mentions Bacon's marriage on the 11th day of May, 
1606, and says, "Sir Francis was married yesterday to 
his young wench in Maribone Chapel. He was clad 
from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and 
wife such store of fine raiment of cloth of silver and 
gold that it draws deep into her portion." In his will 
he left her a box of rings, " save the great diamond." 
He had other jewelry, however, not in this box, for -he 
willed a crushed diamond to some nobleman. As his 
wife displeased him in some grave way he revoked in 
his will some former disposition in her favor. She 
afterwards married her " gentlemanly man-usher." 

Macaulay says Bacon was never charged by any ac- 
cuser, entitled to the smallest credit, with licentious 
habits. How is it possible to associate such sentiment 
as the poem of Lucrece and many of the plays contain, 



140 IS THEEE AXY RESEMBLANCE 

with a man whose nature is so cold that his description 
of love fills the object of his " choice " with dread and 
alarm ! If his love essay is his honest thought, then it 
is impossible to suppose him the author of any love 
poem or scene, and especially one of Shakespeare's. He 
strove for the reputation of wisdom, gravity ; for ven- 
eration, and for fame in history. The condemnation 
of all that was embraced in stage acting as corrupt, and 
of sensual poetry or anything tending to lasciviousness, 
was a part of his profession. Such things as his ad- 
mirers are seeking to adorn him with would have been 
repugnant to his nature, and have shown him thought- 
less of his dignity, careless of his ambition and forget- 
ful of his reputation. The attempt to prove that Bacon 
was in sympathy with the stage and play acting is every- 
where contradicted by his expressions of distaste for it. 

It will not be admitted by any one that the writer of 
the plays could have been devoid of the spirit that per- 
vades them, or indifferent about their success. Their 
music could never be as sweet, their humor as delight- 
ful, their philosophy as true or their people as natural 
if they had been the work of a man who had no con- 
science in his art or kindred in his characters. It is 
impossible that one whose nature was not overflowing 
with the spirit of romance, poetry and adventure, and 
who was not inspired with a love of the creations of his 
fancy and imagination, could have touched the human 
heart as Shakespeare has done. 

While some people of the present day are so incredu- 
lous as to Shakespeare's learning, and so unwilling to 
admit that he possessed sufficient familiarity with the 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 141 

literature of his day to have produced his works, it is 
reassuring to contrast their doubts with the attacks 
made upon him by his rival contemporaries. Greene, 
for instance, who knew Shakespeare well, and " whose 
Pandosto afforded Shakespeare the plot for his Winter's 
Tale," charges him with pilfering from iEschylus, Boc- 
caccio, Bandello, Holinshed, Belleforest, Benoit de St. 
Maur, Lugamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert of 
Wace, Peter of Longtoft, Robert Manning, John de 
Mandeville, Sackville, Spenser, Sidney, Rowley, Decker 
and Chettle. 

It is remarkable that poor Greene in his jealousy of 
Shakespeare should have furnished such an uninten- 
tional denial of the charge of Shakespeare's illiter- 
acy. It would be absurd to suppose that he would 
accuse him of pilfering from these sources if he did not 
know them to be accessible to him. It is more than 
doubtful if it required a familiarity with the classics to 
become familiar with these authors, as they were prob- 
ably all translated into English. While Bacon was 
travelling back toward antiquity, there were others who 
were arraying the ancients in English costume. " The 
three Roman plays, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and An- 
tony and Cleopatra, were derived from North's fransla- 
tion of Plutarch's Lives (1579) ; Troilus and Cressida 
from Ludgate's Troy Book (printed 1513), and Chap- 
man's translation of Homer (1596). All's Well that 
Ends Well, from a translation of Painter's Palace of 
Pleasure, of the ninth novel of the third day of Boccac- 
cio's Decameron. The story of Much Ado about Noth- 
ing is found in Spenser's Faerie Queene, founded upon 



142 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

a story in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516)/' By these 
dates we know that Homer, Plutarch and Boccaccio 
were translated before these plays were written. The 
seven historical plays, also King Lear and Macbeth, 
were drawn from the Chronicles of Holinshed. There 
is nothing to prove that Shakespeare did not read lan- 
guages with as much ease as Bacon. Such knowledge 
was more common then than now. The facilities for 
acquiring it were abundant. Priests, monks and school- 
masters were proficients. Pope is an apt illustration, 
although somewhat later. Encyclopaedia Britannica 
says of him, " The delicate child's book-education was 
desultory and irregular. His father's religion excluded 
him from the public schools. Before he was twelve he 
got a smattering of Latin and Greek from various mas- 
ters, from a priest at Hampshire, from a schoolmaster 
at Twyford, from another at Marlebone, from a third at 
Hyde Park Corner, and finally from another priest at 
home. He thought himself the better in some respects 
for not having had a regular education." 

Do not the Baconites believe in genius ? Do they 
think Bacon possessed none, or do they think he had it 
all ? How do they account for such children as Pope, 
Macaulay, Jeremy Bentham (who studied Latin at the 
age of three, French conversation at five, and was 
matriculated at college at thirteen), or such a prodigy 
as Crichton, whose skill, intellectually and physically, 
verged on enchantment? Do they expect to convince 
people that Shakespeare could not have written the 
plays, by exaggerating the difficulties of acquiring a 
reading knowledge of languages that every schoolmaster 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 143 

understood, and which was the fashion at that time? 
Even poor drunken Greene seems to have possessed the 
linguistic knowledge, the supposed lack of which has 
furnished an argument for the writing of volumes to 
prove Shakespeare could not have written the plays. 
The writings of Shakespeare's detractors abound in 
references to Bacon's biographers, and they endeavor 
by insinuation to make it appear that they partially 
favor their theory. This is absolutely unfounded. 
There is no shadow for such an impression. They are 
full believers in Shakespeare, and Devey says he cre- 
ated a new language. I doubt if any one can honestly 
believe Bacon wrote the plays, after reading his vers- 
ification of the 104th Psalm. 

In the articles which have been written to show par- 
allels between Shakespeare and Bacon, the former, 
almost without exception, is in verse and the latter 
always in prose. There is never any comparison of 
style, but it is the subject and the similarity of certain 
words to which attention is called, and even then it is 
often difficult to discover the similitudes. It seems to 
me, also, that it is very far-sought comparison to en- 
deavor to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays 
by evidence that the writer of the plays had a knowl- 
edge of the authors that Bacon has copied in his mem- 
orandums ; especially as these writings were mostly 
translated and translators were easily found. These 
resemblances are mostly cited in Bacon's Prom us, which 
is a collection of notes (over 1600) which he jotted down 
for future use from what he read and heard. They are 
not sketches ; and among them all there is not a hint 



144 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

of the story or plot of one of Shakespeare's plays. I 
fully appreciate the need of notes to an author. Fancy 
is a mistress full of moods, to whose visits, whenever 
they may chance to come, her votaries are always atten- 
tive, and incidents are vivid when they are fresh. I 
have read some of Hawthorne's notes that were stories 
in embryo ; but Bacon's notes were not fancies or in- 
cidents : they were words, exclamations and sentences. 
They had about the same relation to the article in 
which they might afterwards appear as Mr. Vincent 
Crummies' " real pump and washing-tubs " to the pros- 
pective play that Nickleby might write, and many of 
them were about as wooden : a school-boy sort of trick 
of saving up a lot of words to eke out compositions and 
produce effects. They were his veritable "apparatus 
of rhetoric ;" the " doors, windows, staircases and back 
rooms to be skillfully contrived." They were not his 
own thoughts, but material that he picked up to be 
worked into anything that he might have in hand, and 
they account for what I have said in a previous chapter 
of his extraordinary habit of quotation. They are the 
things Bacon calls " unmade up.'** Their preservation in 
the British Museum also shows that he did not destroy 
his manuscripts. When the meaningless and ordinary 
character of much of this Promus collection is con- 
sidered, it will show my description to be reasonable 
and not cheap ridicule, as I fear it may at first appear ; 
indeed, these notes are of so promiscuous a character 
that even Spedding, Bacon's greatest admirer, says " it 
is sometimes difficult to understand why these particular 
lines should have been taken and so many others, ap- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 145 

parently of equal merit, passed by ;" but he accounts 
for it by the most flattering conjecture, and seems to 
have no doubt but when the expressions come to be 
" made up " Bacon will fully justify himself. Here 
follow some instances of Bacon's title to Shakespeare's 
plays : 

Pronius, note 1404: "O the." Shakespeare. — "O 
the heavens !" (Tempest, i. 2, twice). " O the devil !" 
(Richard III., iv. 3). "O the time!" (Hamlet, v. 1, 
song). " O the gods !" (Cymbeline, i. 5 ; Coriolanus, 
iv. 1). "O the good gods!" (Antony and Cleopatra, 
v. 11). "O the vengeance!" (Hamlet, ii. 2). " O all 
the devils !" (Cymbeline, i. 5). " O the Lord !" (2d 
Henry IV., ii. 4). " O the blest gods !" (King Lear, 
ii. 4). 

Promus, note 1221 : "Amen." Then follows a pas- 
sage from Macbeth in which " Amen " occurs four times, 
and a note follows saying that " Amen " occurs sixty-three 
times in the plays. They might by this test prove that 
Bacon wrote the Bible. 

Promus, note 1211 : "The Cocke." 

" Come, stir, stir, stir ! the second cock hath crowed." 

— Romeo and Juliet. 

I do not think it worth while to cite these examples 
at any length. There is, however, no better argument 
against the Baeonites' theory than some of these volumes 
written in support of it. This book (Mrs. Pott's) 
abounds in the most unfinished expressions, to all of 
which she has fitted parts of Shakespeare's plays, 
and yet there is not one that makes any allusion 
10 



146 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

to a character, a plot or an incident in one of the 
plays ; and the same is true of all other works of the 
same nature. Mr. Abbott, who wrote the preface to 
Mrs. Pott's work, felt himself constrained to state that 
he could not accept her conclusions, and that whereas 
she thought the plays borrowed from the Promus, his 
belief was that the Promus borrowed from the plays. 
Note 1223 of the Promus : 

" You could not sleepe for y r yll lodging." 
For similarity to this : 

" Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, 

Being so troublesome a bedfellow ? 

O polish'd perturbation! golden care! 

That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide 

To many a watchful night," etc. 

— Second Part Henry IV., iv. 4. 
" (We sleep) in the affliction of these terrible dreams 
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead 
Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
In restless ecstasy." — Macbeth. 

That is a most singular description of ill lodging. 
Note 1548 : 

" La faim chasse le loup hors du bois." 

Similarity : 

"The other lords, like lions wanting food, 
Do rush upon us as their hungry prey. . . . 
Let's leave this town ; for they are hare-brained slaves, 
And hunger will enforce them to be more eager; 
Of old I know them ; rather with their teeth 
The walls they'll tear down than forsake the siege." 

There are hundreds of pages of comparisons as ab- 
surd as these, and which, in my opinion, are conclusive 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAEE AND BACON? 147 

proofs that the man who made such a collection could 
not have written with freedom, ease or spontaneity ; and 
it is singular that one can continue to feel any interest 
in this subject after becoming convinced that the writer 
of the plays needed such commonplace prompting. If 
I were trying to prove Bacon the writer of the plays, I 
would wish that the .Promus were not his almost as 
much as I should regret his versification of the 104th 
Psalm, of which his admirers are evidently entirely 
ignorant or ashamed, having omitted to quote it. 

One of the most emphasized instances of a likeness 
in the writings is note 1207, Golden Sleepe. The sim- 
ilarity is : 

" Where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain 
Doth couch his limbs, there goldeu sleep doth reign." 

— Romeo and Juliet, 

The question of probability is whether Bacon, seeing 
Romeo and Juliet, should miss the finer parts of a play 
in which the " lover thinks so absurdly well of the 
party loved," and, his ear being caught by the sound of 
" golden sleepe," he should jot it down for future rhe- 
torical effect, to be " made up " into " frontispieces " of 
" Traditive Prudence ;" or whether, having met with it 
elsewhere, he should use it as a reminder in composing 
verses in which it had no relation to the sense, and was 
the least striking part, as " golden " could better be 
spared from these lines than any other word in thern. 

Some other words thus caught and secured are : 
(1294) watery impression; (1312) neutrality; (1230) 
hot cockles; (1231) good night; (1232) well to forget; 
(1224) I cannot get out of my good lodging; (1221) 



148 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

Amen; (1215) uprouse, you are upp ; (1213) court 
howers; (1189) good morrow — ninety-six times in the 
plays; (1190) good swoer — for similitude, "good even" 
occurs eleven times in the plays; (1191) good travaille; 
(1192) good matens; (1193) good betimes; (1180) 
betts, lookers on, judgment; (1181) groome, porter; 
(1183) oddes, stake, sett; (1168) art of forgetting; 
(1158) abomination; (1152) it is Goddes doing; (1132) 
for learning sake ; (965) no smoke without fire; (964) 
might overcomes right; (957) we be but where we 
were ; (952) pride will have a fall ; (878) owles egg ; 
(864) armed entreaty; (818) cream of nectar; (718 a) 
to way ancre. These are a few of the notes that Mrs. 
Pott has set forth in an octavo volume of 628 pages to 
show that Bacon wrote the plays. To all of them she 
has adjusted some Shakespeare passage. From note 
1216, "Poor men's howres," she has made up a whole 
page from Henry V. and VI. It is seldom that the 
actual word occurs, but there is something like it — some 
distant relative perhaps. 

It simplifies an argument greatly when one side to it 
is willing to accept, in support of its claims, the state- 
ment of the other side, and this certainly no believer in 
Shakespeare need hesitate to do. Although Mrs. Pott 
finds such strong resemblances in the passages she sets 
forth, they may be confidently recommended to all 
Shakespeare readers, as their forced and strained nature 
simply exposes the weakness of the claim. Without 
intended discourtesy or disregard of the respect due one 
who has done such a work in proof of her faith, Mrs. 
Pott's book reminds me of a social amusement called 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 149 

" What is my thought like ?" in which one person whis- 
pers an object, and another a subject, to each of the 
company, and then it is the part of each one in turn to 
describe some resemblance between the two. It seems 
to me that this is the game that Mrs. Pott plays 
in her book. Bacon furnishes her with an object, 
and in Shakespeare she finds a thought, and then 
fits them together according to the measure of her 
own cleverness rather than by any inherent similarity ; 
for instance, "polished perturbation," "golden care" 
and " restless ecstasy " as descriptive of ill lodging. 
Those who have played at this with clever people will 
remember what unexpected and extraordinary resem- 
blances are often discovered, and also what ingenious 
absurdities can be invented. It was not necessary, 
however, for Mrs. Pott to take the Promus for this 
purpose. There are very many books that would have 
been infinitely more suitable. When Shakespeare's 
plays are before one, it is possible to find some suspicion 
of « resemblance to almost any word or expression in 
the English language. No one with the fancy to write 
Mother Goose would need to have his imagination 
prodded or his " understanding twitched " by such a 
medley of ordinary and unsuggestive notes. They 
indicate that his writing was of a laborious, methodical 
and mechanical character; and the discovery in the 
British Museum of Bacon's " preparatory .store for the 
furniture of speech " (Spedding) is calculated to weaken 
the belief in his originality rather than to prove him 
a poet, "with seething brain" and "imagination all 
compact." 



150 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 



CHAPTER VIII. 

What is known of Shakespeare during his life — Bacon's books 
and handwriting — His debts and enmities — His secretary 
— Cecil's letter to Bacon — Impossibility of writing in con- 
cealment — Shakespeare's independence of character — The 
play of Eichard II. — Puritanical hostility to the theatre — 
Shakespeare's* fortune. 

The idea of the little that is known of Shakespeare 
during his life is greatly exaggerated, and must be 
attributed to the natural desire to know everything con- 
cerning him. He is as well known as could be expected 
from the circumstances under which his life was passed. 
If he had written about himself, as Bacon did, the 
incidents of his life would have been fully known ; or 
if he had been a politician or a courtier, more would 
have been known of his personal traits. But if he had 
possessed all of Bacon's book learning it would not have 
given him any prominence in the history of the times 
while he only employed it in his profession. 

A man of Shakespeare's tastes, with his conception 
of the beauty of truth and nobility in human nature, 
could hardly have found anything to attract him in the 
life of a court where lying was a fine art, even if he 
could have gained admission there. Yet that was just 
the place that possessed the most irresistible attraction 
for Bacon, from his youth to his death. Shakespeare's 
work proves him to have been a studious and indus- 
trious man ; but it was in a field that denied him any 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 151 

popularity with the historians of his time, for none of 
them, I think, mention the stage. 

Among the reasons urged to prove that Shakespeare 
was not an educated man, one is that no book known 
to have belonged to him can be found now, after two 
hundred and seventy years. The same is true of Ba- 
con's books, however, for Spedding wonders what has 
become of them, as few, if any, have survived. It is 
hardly worth while to reply to such arguments. A 
man might have access to books without owning them, 
and things of such a perishable nature might be de- 
stroyed in a few hours, in a fire like that of the Globe 
Theatre in 1613. It would not be much more ridic- 
ulous to argue that the only people in this country who 
wore clothes or had any furniture, a century ago, were 
a few of the revolutionary patriots, notably Washing- 
ton, as only some garments, etc., belonging to them have 
been preserved. Likewise, upon the perpetual-chattel 
mode of reasoning, Stephen Girard was an exceptional 
instance of a man of his time " clothed and in his right 
mind." 

Another ground for the conclusion that Shakespeare 
was not the writer of the plays is his signatures to his 
will, written about a month before his death — under 
what circumstances certainly no one will presume to 
know. I imagine that if the last letter that Bacon 
wrote, when he said his fingers were so stiff he could 
hardly hold a pen, could be compared with the signa- 
tures to Shakespeare's will, it would prove him to have 
been an unconscionable ignoramus, upon the same style 
of argument. The players undoubtedly learned their 



152 IS THEEE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

roles from Shakespeare's manuscripts. There is a lith- 
ograph fac simile in the fly-leaves of Mrs. Pott's Promus 
which I suppose to be Bacon's chirography. Compared 
to it, Shakespeare's signatures are Spencerian. Mrs. 
Pott does not refer to it, so far as I can find. I have 
tried to read it with a magnifying-glass, but in vain. 
It may be the chicken letter, or it may be the key that 
solves that nondescript tongue mentioned in the New 
Atlantis, which " Hebrews, Persians and Indians could 
read as if written in their own language." It has three 
or four blots on it as big as wafers, and does not bear 
out the Bacon ires' theory that learned men produce neat 
and legible manuscript. 

In contrast with the love and affection with which 
Shakespeare was regarded by his fellows and all who 
speak of him, and his unbroken friendships with his 
company of players during the many years of associa- 
tion with them, what a record of enmities and hatreds 
does Bacon present ! His one friend was Essex, whose 
blood he " helped to shed, and whose memory he de- 
famed." Ben Jonson admired him as a debater, and 
wrote some eulogistic lines of him on the occasion of 
his sixtieth anniversary, on the eve of his public dis- 
grace. Devey, who says, " Should we direct our views 
to physical science and the creation of material arts, . . . 
we shall be compelled to grace Bacon's temples with 
the proudest wreaths of glory," says also, " Had he not 
inhabited a princely mansion on the Strand and kept a 
plentiful table at Gorhambury, Ben Jonson, instead of 
lauding him, might have censured with Hume, and 
Hobbes have been as niggardly of praise as Bayle. It 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 153 

was the possession of the Great Seal that made it fash- 
ionable to read what few could understand, pushed his 
works into circulation during an unlettered age, and 
gave him Europe for an auditory." If among his 
contemporaries there is any testimony of the love 
of a friend, or praise of a noble quality, I have not 
found it. His superiors held him in contempt, his 
equals despised him and his inferiors ridiculed him. 
He had no element of popularity and no qualities 
to win esteem or confidence. His life on his part 
was a hunt after court favor, and on the part of the 
public a hunt after him by his creditors. Extrav- 
agance, show, debt and corruption ! He not only 
would not pay his debts, but he tried in the most 
shameless way to shuffle out of them. His mother paid 
many of them under protest against his extravagance 
and his associates. She complained of his servants 
(the names of more than one hundred and fifty are 
published), "that bloody Percy, a coach companion 
and a bed companion, a proud, profane, costly fellow ;" 
another, " filthy, wasteful knave," and the " Welshmen 
who swarm unfavorably." His brother Anthony was 
in constant trouble endeavoring to rescue him from 
suits and financial straits, and to arouse him to a sense 
of duty. In one instance, failing to induce him to per- 
form some service for which he had received a large 
sum, Anthony wrote to the other party offering Various 
lame excuses for Francis, and assured him that he 
would not forget to do his part which his brother 
" hath left softly slide from himself upon me." 

Although Bacon died fifteen thousand pounds in debt, 



154 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

he left five hundred pounds to his servant Mewtys. I 
suppose this is the Meantys who erected a monument 
to him, with an inscription to explain that it exhibited 
him as he sat — " sic sedebat." This monument does 
not accord with Devey's description of Bacon, but looks 
like a self-satisfied, rather jovial and prosperous squire. 
Devey says, " He imagined that he could add many 
years to his life by systematic doses of nitre, and took 
about three grains in weak broth every morning for 
thirty years. He also placed great faith in macerated 
rhubarb to carry off the grosser humors of the body 
without the inconveniences of perspiration, and swal- 
lowed an occasional draught before his meals. . . . His 
severe habits of study early impressed upon him the 
marks of age, bent his shoulders, and gave him the 
stooping gait of a philosopher." 

Meafttys was Bacon's secretary and amanuensis prob- 
ably, as he has described him in a sitting posture as if 
thinking and dictating. Their relation must therefore 
have been very intimate, and it is a reasonable wonder 
whether it would be possible for one so situated to do 
any considerable amount of work (doing the writing 
himself, which was probably not his custom) and con- 
ceal it from his secretary who had charge of his papers 
and the materials in his library. He certainly could 
not do it there. Consider the extent of such an accom- 
plishment : what a way of tossing off these wonder- 
ful productions such a performance would indicate ! 
We know that during this time Bacon was " hanging 
about the court," waiting for Essex to influence the 
queen in his favor. He was thus engaged so constantly 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 155 

that on one occasion Cecil wrote him a scolding letter 
for "snatching a few hours to visit his mother who 
Avas sick at Gor ham bury," as the queen might over- 
come her scruples and speak to him, and it would be 
unfortunate if he were not there, as "it might be 
straight dispatched if luckily handled." We know 
that he studied law and physics, wrote essays and 
carried on a voluminous correspondence. Consider, 
therefore, what it would have been for a man whose 
time seems to his historians to have been so fully occu- 
pied, to have added to it a work (quite out of his 
sphere, requiring a stage knowledge that he certainly 
did not possess), which in itself is almost incredible 
as the production of one man in the time it ap- 
peared, and add to this the claim that it was done 
under circumstances impossible for that kind of accom- 
plishment, i. e., fear of surprise, dodging his secretary, 
hiding his manuscript, destroying all evidence of his 
work, inventing pretexts to be alone and managing 
clandestine communication with a man well known, in 
a small city. These are certainly the conditions that 
must exist under such a hypothesis. Consider then 
what necessity existed for such a stratagem : simply to 
deceive the queen — to hide from her Bacon's dramatic 
genius ! She did not consider him deep as it was, and 
the purpose of this plot seems to have been to con- 
firm her in her judgment. She would not give him 
office, because she had no faith in his talents other than 
legal, therefore the thing most essential to her favor 
was just that ability that this unfathomable mystery 
finds it necessary to conceal. These are the kinds of 



156 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

evidence that people will weigh who are trying to dis- 
cover the probability of Bacon's authorship of the 
plays. They will also, I think, ask why, if Bacon had 
any part in them, they ceased with Shakespeare's con- 
nection with the stage. Bacon was only fifty-one at 
that time, and he lived fifteen years longer ; but no more 
plays appeared, and he wrote no poetry unless the 
versification of the Psalms can be so considered. Of 
them his biographer Abbott says, " A true poet, even 
of a low order, could hardly betray the cramping in- 
fluence of rhyme and metre. ... I cannot help coming 
to the conclusion that, although Bacon might have 
written better verse on some subject of his own choos- 
ing, the chances are that even his best would not have 
been very good." Bacon was thirty years old before 
any of Shakespeare's plays appeared, and outlived 
Shakespeare ten years ; yet neither before nor after the 
dates of the plays did he give any signs of poetic 
genius. The divine spark appears in most unexpected 
places, but it has no such freaks as that. There never 
were any plays written with Shakespeare's mind in 
them except when Shakespeare was here to write them. 
Mr. Fleay, in his life of Shakespeare, says, " In 
March, 1601, in the Essex trials, Meyric was indicted 
for having procured the outdated tragedy of Richard 
II. to be publicly acted at his own charge for the enter- 
tainment of the conspirators. [I find Meyricke's name 
spelled in five different ways.] From Bacon's speech 
(State Trials) it appears that Phillips was the manager 
who arranged the performance. This identifies the 
company as the chamberlain's, and therefore the play 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAEE AND BACON? 157 

as Shakespeare's. It may seem strange that a play, 
duly licensed and published in 1597, could give offence 
in 1601 ; but the published play did not contain the 
deposition scene (iv. 1); the acted play of 1601 certainly 
did. This point is again brought forward in South- 
ampton's trial : he calmly asked the attorney-general 
what he thought in his conscience they designed to do 
with the queen. ' The same/ replied he, ' that Henry 
of Lancaster did with Richard II.' The examples of 
Richard II. and Edward II. were again quoted by the 
assistant judges against Southampton, while Essex in 
his defence urged the example of the Duke of Guise in 
his favor. From all of this it is clear that the subjects 
chosen for historical plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare 
were unpopular at court, but approved of by the Essex 
faction, and that at last the company incurred the seri- 
ous displeasure of the queen. Accordingly, they did 
not perform at court at Christmas, 1601-2 ; and we 
find them travelling in Scotland instead." 

Mr. Fleay also mentions the following instance to 
show Shakespeare's independence of character : " Shake- 
speare's company being forbidden -to act by the lord 
mayor because certain players in the city handled mat- 
ters of divinity and state without judgment and de- 
corum, went to the Cross-Keys and played that after- 
noon, to the grief of the better sort, who knew they 
were prohibited. The mayor then committed two of 
the players to one of the comptors." Mr. Fleay says, 
" It is pleasing to find Shakespeare's company acting in 
so spirited a manner in defence of free thought and free 
speech. It would be more pleasing to be able to iden- 



158 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

tify him personally as the chief leader in the movement, 
and this I believe he was." 

This picture contradicts the idea of his being Bacon's 
tool, creature or mask. It is improbable that a man of 
Bacon's conservative, order-loving instincts would have 
any fellowship or connection with a man who had not 
more regard for the " better sort," and who had such 
strong friends among the disaffected toward the crown, 
or would take such a hostile attitude toward the sect- 
arian prejudice of the community. The man that 
Bacon would select would not be of Shakespeare's 
stamp. 

Another instance is related by Mr. Fleay, showing 
how just was the esteem felt for Shakespeare by friends 
and acquaintances, as follows : " The Passionate Pil- 
grim reached a third edition and was reissued as cer- 
tain amorous sonnets between Venus and Adonis, by 
W. Shakespeare, ' whereunto is added two love epistles' 
between Paris and Helen. These were stolen from 
Hey wood's Troja Britannica of 1609. In his Apology 
for Actors (1612), he complains of the injury done him, 
as it might lead to unjust suspicion of piracy on his 
part, and adds, ' As I must acknowledge my lines not 
worthy his patronage under whom he hath published 
them, so the author I know much offended with Mr. 
Jaggard, that hath altogether unknown to him pre- 
sumed to make so bold with his name.' In consequence, 
no doubt, of this remonstrance, Jaggard had to substi- 
tute a new title-page, from which Shakespeare's name 
was entirely omitted. He had allowed his name to be 
used in the titles of the London Prodigal in 1605, of 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAKE AND BACON? 159 

the Yorkshire Tragedy in 1608, of the Passionate 
Pilgrim in 1609, and even of Sir John Oldcastle in 
1600, without murmuring; but directly the interest 
of another demands justice at his hands he takes 
prompt action, and compels the piratical publisher to 
withdraw his name altogether." This printer is one 
of the firm of Blount and Jaggard who printed the 
folio edition eleven years later. 

The playing of Richard II. as a part of the indict- 
ment against the conspirators not only shows Shake- 
speare's independence of character, but Bacon's appear- 
ance as a prosecutor puts him in a hostile attitude 
toward the play. 

I find the following in Macaulay's essay on Lord 
Bacon : " Everybody was now at liberty to speak out 
respecting those lamentable events in which Bacon had 
borne so large a share. Elizabeth was scarcely cold 
when the public feeling began to manifest itself by 
marks of respect toward Lord Southampton. That 
accomplished nobleman, who will be remembered to the 
latest ages as the generous and discerning patron of 
Shakespeare, was held in honor by his contemporaries 
chiefly on account of the devoted affection which he had 
borne to Essex. He had been tried and convicted to- 
gether with his friend ; but the queen had spared his 
life, and, at the time of her death, he was still a pris- 
oner. A crowd of visitors hastened to the Tower to 
congratulate him on his approaching deliverance. With 
that crowd Bacon could not venture to mingle." 

Long preceding Essex's outbreak Bacon did his 
utmost to restrain him, and tried as long as he could, 



160 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

with safety to himself, to reconcile him to the queen. 
When he found that his advocacy of Essex's cause be- 
gan to arouse the queen's suspicion against himself, he 
suddenly changed his course and voluntarily became the 
prosecutor of the conspirators, who were all convicted 
and sentenced to death at this trial, and, with the ex- 
ception of Southampton, were executed. As the pris- 
oners were not allowed counsel, the proceedings took a 
tone of personal altercation. In reply to a speech of 
Bacon, Essex said he would quote Mr. Bacon against 
Mr. Bacon, and then he told how Bacon had written 
two letters to be shown to the queen ; one he had 
signed Anthony Bacon, and worded it as though in- 
tended to provoke Essex ; and the other he had signed 
with Essex's name, and in it " he laid down the cause 
of my discontent and pleaded as orderly for me as I 
could for myself." Bacon, at first discomfited, replied 
that he had " spent more hours to make Essex a meet 
servant for her majesty " than he desired. This was 
undoubtedly true ; but the falsehood toward the queen 
and the treachery toward Essex were not explained 
away by it. These letters are in print. 

My purpose here, however, is to show that Bacon 
had no fellowship or faith in Essex's disaffection toward 
the queen, and not to multiply instances of his ignoble- 
ness ; yet it is hardly possible to speak of any event in 
which he bore a part without uncovering some act of 
gross meanness and duplicity. Southampton, who was 
Essex's closest friend during all these troubles, and was 
general of the horse under him in the Irish campaign, 
was Shakespeare's patron, to whom he had dedicated his 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 161 

Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. Under such circum- 
stances it was only natural that Shakespeare and his 
company should be found near his friends, and that they 
should have been present to play for the Essex faction ; 
but his presence among them cannot be reconciled with 
any possibility of a bond existing between him (Shake- 
speare) and Bacon, or of Bacon's having the least influ- 
ence over him. Shakespeare's attitude at this time is 
singularly strong evidence that he was not Bacon's crea- 
ture, for if such a relation existed, Bacon was quite at 
Shakespeare's mercy. 

This is Bacon's account of the play as it was used in 
evidence against the conspirators : " The afternoon be- 
fore the rebellion Merrick, with a great number of 
others, that afterwards were all in the action, had pro- 
cured to be played before them the play of deposing 
King Richard II. ; neither was it casual, but a play 
bespoke by Merrick, and not so only ; for when it was 
told him by one of the players that the play was old, 
and they should have loss in playing it, because few 
would come to see it, there was forty shillings extraor- 
dinary given to one of the players (Philips), and so 
thereupon played it was. So earnest was he to satisfy 
his eyes with the sight of that tragedy, which he 
thought soon after his lordship should bring from the 
stage to the state, but that God turned it upon their 
own heads." Bacon was offensively active at the trial 
in urging the treasonable bearing of this play as evi- 
dence of the designs of the conspirators. Sir Gilly 
Mey rick's trial took place a few days, after Southamp- 
ton's, and he wrote to Southampton that " Bacon was 
11 



162 IS THERE ANY . RESEMBLANCE 

very idle, and I hope he may have the reward of it in 
the end." Supposing Bacon to have written the play, 
then he is arraigning these men for treason upon the 
ground of their having chosen a play written by him- 
self to illustrate their treasonable purposes, and Shake- 
speare is standing mutely by to see his patron and 
friends sacrificed, when one word from him could 
easily silence Bacon. It cannot be held that the writ- 
ing of the play was treasonable, for the play had been 
written anterior to these events, and not for any such 
purpose ; yet when the play first appeared, the deposi- 
tion scene was interdicted by the master of the revels, 
and this representation was probably the first time that 
that scene (iv. 1) had been performed. The play had a 
great success when first brought out, and is said to have 
been acted forty times, sometimes in the streets of Lon- 
don, but this objectionable scene was suppressed. There- 
fore it may easily be imagined what a weapon against 
Bacon these men could have made of it, if the facts 
had been in accord with the Baconite theory. Shake- 
speare's independent stand shows at least that his sym- 
pathies were with his friends, and it cannot be imag- 
ined that he would not have aided them by a hint that 
certainly would have destroyed all the effect of Bacon's 
legal wit, and would have driven him out of court and 
might ^easily have sent him to the Tower. Can any 
one suppose that Bacon would have failed to see the 
force of such a counter charge, or would have exposed 
himself to the chance of it ? If he had been so placed, 
his only safety would have been to anticipate what he 
would have foreseen must surely happen, and to con- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 163 

fess his innocent connection with this part of the in- 
dictment in advance of the accusation. His standing 
with the queen was very insecure. Spedding and all 
his biographers enlarge upon the disfavor against Ba- 
con both at court and among the people. Macaulay 
says the queen had begun to suspect him, and Bacon 
says, " She did directly charge me that I was absent 
that day at the Star Chamber, which was very true, 
but I alleged some indisposition of the body to excuse 
it." 

Abbott says this is not true, and that he urged some 
reason calculated the more to exasperate the queen 
against Essex. It is evident that the queen was watch- 
ing Bacon closely. Chamberlain in his history cannot 
account for the queen's severe treatment of Hayward, 
and I have read a number- of criticisms of her actions 
at this time in the same strain ; but Mr. Fleay, al- 
though speaking in regard to another subject, throws a 
light upon the queen's position which fully explains 
her feeling. He says " it (Richard II.) was produced 
before the publication of the pope's bull in 1596, in- 
citing the queen's subjects to depose her. In conse- 
quence of this bull the abdication scene was omitted in 
representations and in the editions during Elizabeth's 
lifetime. In like manner Hayward was imprisoned 
for publishing in 1599 his History of the First Year 
of Henry IV., which is simply the story of Richard's 
abdication." It will be seen, therefore, the playing of 
the deposition scene was a defiance of the queen. It 
had been suppressed by her will because it described 
the same fate of an earlier English king as the pope 



164 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

sought to accomplish against her. A book dedicated to 
Essex, who was in rebellion against her, and a play 
acted for the conspirators with this scene restored, 
which had been forbidden, could only be understood as 
directed at her. 

What then would have been the anger of the queen 
if it had been suddenly discovered on the trial that Ba- 
con was the author of the play ! It would have assumed 
an importance that did not attach to it as written by a 
man who had no political ambition or standing, and 
must have thrown a suspicion upon him that would 
have at least demanded an investigation. 

To realize the effect of such a revelation in the 
course of these proceedings, Bacon's position, standing 
and character must be borne in mind, not morally, but 
his well-known afribition for things the opposite of 
amusement and diversion. The surprise at a sudden 
discovery that this man was playing a double part, and 
that his real character was so different from his assumed 
one, would have thrown the court into a state of con- 
sternation, and drawn attention from the prisoners 
and turned it upon the attorney, and it would have 
been the startling feature of the trial. It would have 
caused an intermission, at least, in favor of the prison- 
ers, and demanded a severe examination to determine 
what other concealment existed ; and during that time 
Bacon would reasonably have suffered confinement with 
the others. 

I do not think I over-estimate the bearing upon this 
subject of Bacon's attitude toward the play of Richard 
II. and toward Shakespeare in this trial. This is a 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 165 

question mainly of probability ; it is by realizing, as 
nearly as possible, the circumstances and the events, 
that the probabilities must be weighed. It is singular 
that history should have placed the principals of this 
controversy in such an antagonistic position to each 
other, and I do not know of attention having been 
called to it. One of the accused (Essex) was Bacon's 
benefactor, from whom he had received the gift of 
Twickenham Court. The other (Southampton) was 
Shakespeare's patron, to whom he had dedicated two 
of his poems, and who is supposed to have made him a 
very generous gift of money. In this historical event 
we know that Bacon had forgotten the benefits received 
and had taken a position in deadly hostility to his ben- 
efactor, and the Baconite theory places Shakespeare in 
the same despicable light without even a motive. 

The personal wrangling in this trial, upon insignif- 
icant points, shows how eagerly the accused strove to 
defend themselves, and it cannot be thought that they 
would have failed to retaliate upon Bacon had they 
known of such an opportunity. The matter, then, is 
reduced to a question whether Shakespeare could have 
possessed such a secret and not revealed it to his friends 
in the hope of saving their lives. From Shakespeare's 
attitude toward the Essex faction, his company playing 
a scene suited to the designs of the " conspirators," and 
from the fact of the company not returning to play at 
court at the Christmas holidays, it is plain that the 
queen was displeased with them, and that Shakespeare 
was in nowise controlled or influenced by Bacon. Then 
the Baconites must invent some new theory to prove 



166 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

Shakespeare to have been as mean and ungrateful as 
their idol, in order to account for his silence — his 
silence at first while his patron was on trial for his life, 
and afterwards while he lay in the Tower awaiting 
execution ; silence in the interest of a man with whom 
no instance has ever shown him to have had any per- 
sonal acquaintance ; with no cause and against reason, 
personal interest and gratitude. 

It is simply a question whether Bacon could possibly 
have appeared as a prosecutor in these State Trials under 
such circumstances. If he had written a scene that 
might afford entertainment and encouragement to a 
faction hostile to the government, instead of appearing 
in court and goading the offenders, it is more probable 
that he would have quaked with fear, sued for for- 
giveness, " prudently put the blame upon others," and 
endeavored to explain away its suspicious or objection- 
able meaning. 

He was not obliged to appear against the prisoners. 
Hume says, " The most remarkable circumstance in the 
Essex trial was Bacon's appearance against him. He 
was none of the crown lawyers, so was not obliged by 
his office to assist at this trial ; yet he did not scruple, 
in order to obtain the queen's favor, to be active in 
bereaving of life his friend and patron, whose generosity 
he had often experienced." 

Macaulay says, " What course was Bacon to take ? 
This was one of those conjunctures which show what 
men are. To a high-minded man, wealth, power, court 
favor, even personal safety, would have appeared of no 
account when opposed to friendship, gratitude and 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAKE AND BACON? 167 

honor. Such a man would have stood by the side of 
Essex at the trial, would have spent all his power, 
might, authority and amity in soliciting a mitigation 
of the sentence, would have been a daily visitor at the 
cell, would have received the last injunctions and the 
last embraces on the scaffold, would have employed all 
the powers of his intellect to guard from insult the fame 
of his generous though erring friend. Bacon did not 
even preserve neutrality. He appeared as counsel for 
the prosecution. In that situation he did not confine 
himself to what would have been amply sufficient to 
prove a verdict. He employed all his wit, rhetoric and 
his learning, not to insure a conviction — for the circum- 
stances were such that a conviction was inevitable — but 
to deprive the unhappy prisoner of all those excuses 
which, though legally of no value, yet tended to dimin- 
ish the moral guilt of the crime, and which therefore, 
though they could not justify the peers in pronouncing 
an acquittal, might incline the queen to grant a pardon." 
I have not inserted this extract from Macaulay to 
add anything more to the evidence of Bacon's insensi- 
bility to any high or noble qualities, but to show the 
glaring impossibility of reconciling his attitude in these 
trials with the theory of his connection with the play 
which was a part of the indictment. Macaulay, uncon- 
scious of any such necessity, furnishes a plea for his 
absence, had he simply desired to show his gratitude to 
his benefactor in recognition of benefits received. If to 
that could be added the fact that such a course was 
dictated by personal safety, then how rash and suicidal 
does his conduct appear ! 



168 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

Recklessness of this kind is the opposite of any opin- 
ion ever formed of him. Macaulay says, " He seems to 
have been incapable of feeling strong affection, of facing 
great dangers, of making great sacrifices; his desires 
were set on things below." And his historian, Joseph 
Devey, M.A., says, " In 1593 he sat for Middlesex and 
delivered his maiden speech in favor of laAv reform. 
The praises which followed so intoxicated him that in 
an ensuing debate on the subsidy he broke out into a 
flaming oration against the court, denouncing the claim 
as extravagant, and dwelling with pathetic sympathy 
upon the miseries which such exactions must cause 
among the country gentry, who would, be constrained 
to sell their plate and brass pans to meet the demands 
of the crown. Bacon carried his motion for an inquiry, 
and struck all the courtiers with horror and amazement. 
The queen, highly incensed, desired it to be intimated 
to the delinquent that he must never more expect favor 
or promotion. The spirit of the rising patriot was 
cowed; with bated breath he whispered expressions 
of repentance and amendment, and never afterwards 
played the patriot further than was consistent with his 
interest at court." 

Whatever may be the estimate of his intellectual 
power, there was none of the stuff in him that makes 
conspirators, traitors, rebels, martyrs or heroes. Bacon 
in his Apology gives an account of his interview with 
the queen in regard to the Hayward book ; and his 
(Bacon's) friends (by what reasoning I do not know) 
find some ground in it for supposing that the queen 
suspected Bacon of having written the book; conse- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 169 

quently he wrote Shakespeare's plays. The queen may 
for a moment have suspected him of the dedication, as 
she knew his debt to Essex, and knew how Essex had 
sued for him while he waited outside ; but it was not a 
question of literary ability ; it was a search for proofs 
of treason. 

It is more than probable that Bacon drew the queen's 
attention to Hay ward's book (it had been in print sev- 
eral years), and that he was the cause of Hayward's 
arrest and imprisonment, and it is probable also that he 
drew the indictment containing the play. One writer 
comments upon Bacon's clear understanding of the in- 
dictment, whereas Coke confused the book and the 
play. Abbott says Bacon's habit was to describe things 
rather by the " sequel " than the " fact," and this inter- 
view is evidently an instance. 

There is no word, so far as is known, that was ever 
uttered or written by any contemporary of Shakespeare, 
or until over two hundred years after his death, that 
even hints at a disbelief in his authorship or in his 
ability to write the plays and sonnets. His association 
with his fellow actors was most intimate. He was one 
of a great number of play writers of his time ; notably, 
Marlowe, Greene, Decker, Sackville (who wrote the 
earliest known tragedy in the English language, " Gor- 
boduc," which was performed before Queen Elizabeth, 
January 18, 1562), Jonson, Rowley, Peele, Lodge, 
Drayton, Fletcher, Kyd, Wilkins, Wilson, Tarleton, 
Tourneau, Davenport, Heywood, Chapman, Nash and 
Chettle. 

It is known that at first he wrote parts only of some 



170 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

plays, and that he was associated with Fletcher, Mar- 
lowe and Davenport in writing for the theatre. The 
attack upon him by Greene as -" the upstart crow " and 
" Shakescene " was known to the whole theatrical fra- 
ternity, and was much discussed; so also was his 
estrangement with Ben Jonson. If he had been an 
illiterate man, Greene would have attacked him as 
such, and not as a plagiarist who simply took plots and 
characters from other authors ; and Greene's sneer at 
him as a " factotum " attests his activity in the business 
of his company. 

Jonson speaks of him as the " gentle Shakespeare " 
in reference to the portrait on the frontispiece of the 
folio edition of 1623, and pays also a tribute to his wit 
that sets entirely at rest any question as to his belief in 
Shakespeare's genius and ability. It must be remem- 
bered that London was a city of only about one hun- 
dred thousand inhabitants at that time, and the nature 
of the profession caused theatrical people to become 
very well acquainted with each other. 

There were most active jealousies in London between 
the theatrical companies ; some of the political disputes 
of the time were alluded to on the stage, and the 
church party was strongly opposed to the theatre. In 
addition to that, the plague in 1592 caused the theatres 
to be closed ; and again in 1599 it visited London 
severely, and the city was not free from it for twenty 
years. In order to appreciate what the players had to 
contend with, and the little likelihood there was that 
Bacon, with his devotion to established forms, could 
have any sympathy, acquaintance or connection what- 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 171 

ever with men so far out of the pale of his respectabil- 
ity, one must know how strong was the opposition to 
the theatres. 

"In those days the frequent visitation of plagues 
made men fear the gathering together of multitudes. 
This dread of pestilence, united with a puritanic hatred 
of plays, made the citizens do all they could to dis- 
countenance theatrical entertainments. The queen ac- 
knowledged the validity of the first reason, but she 
repudiated the religious objections, provided ordinary 
care was taken to allow such plays only as were fitted 
to yield honest recreation and no example of evil" 
(Encyclopaedia Britannica). 

On April 11, 1582, " the lords of the council wrote 
to the lord mayor to the effect that, as her majesty 
sometimes took delight in those pastimes, it had been 
thought not unfit, having regard to the season of the 
year and the clearance of the city from infection, to 
allow of certain companies of players in London, partly 
that they might thereby attain more dexterity and per- 
fection, the better to content her majesty." 

" In November, 1589, in consequence of certain play- 
ers in London handling matters of divinity and state 
without judgment and decorum, one Mr. Tylney writes 
Lord Burleigh that he utterly mislikes all plays within 
the city, and Lord Burleigh sends a letter to the lord 
mayor to stay them. Thereafter commissioners were 
appointed to examine all plays, and a license was re- 
quired" (Fleay). 

"On the 8th of February, 1604, there occurs an 
entry in the revels accounts which explains the small 



172 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

number of theatrical performances and the cessation of 
work of the principal author (Shakespeare) for the 
king's men in 1603. To R. Burbaclge was given £30 
for the maintenance and relief of himself and the rest 
of his company, being prohibited to present any plays 
publicly in or near London by reason of great peril that 
might grow through the extraordinary concourse and 
assembly of people to a new increase of the plague, 'till 
it shall please God to settle the city with a more perfect 
health " (Fleay). 

"From July, 1603, 'till March, 1604, the theatres 
were probably closed. Shakespeare's company (the 
king's men) were most likely travelling in the provinces 
'till the winter, but were disappointed at not being 
allowed to reopen at Christmas, when the plague had 
abated " (Fleay). 

" All the theatres were built outside of the jurisdic- 
tion of the municipality of the city, which being Puri- 
tan in its tendencies, had long carried on a war against 
the players and all theatrical entertainments. The cor- 
poration of London argued that such amusements tended 
to the ' desecration of the Sabbath and saints' days,' 
that they brought young people together under ' un- 
meet circumstances,' that they were but encouragers of 
intemperance and tavern brawls, that they caused a sin- 
ful waste of money, which had better be given to the 
poor, that they were the means of many people being 
hurt by falling of scaffolds, and by the weapons and gun- 
powder used during the performances, and that through 
the bringing together of such great crowds, they tended 
to increase and disseminate the plague " (Baldwin). 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEAKE AND BACON? 173 

These accounts are the history of that time, and they 
show that " stage acting in the profession of it " was 
" disreputable/' as Bacon asserted. It was under the 
ban, subject to interruption, suppression and command 
of the ruling power, and existed only by indulgence. It 
is unquestionable that had not the plays furnished amuse- 
ment for Queen Elizabeth and afterward King James, 
and for certain noblemen who did not sympathize with 
the puritanical spirit of the time, the theatres would 
have been entirely closed, as they were a few years later. 
It is notable that even more plays were given at the 
Christmas festivities during the reign of King James 
than in Queen Elizabeth's reign. 

" On the 2d of September, 1642, by order of the two 
houses of Parliament, the theatres were closed, as a be- 
coming measure during the season of public calamity 
and impending civil war." In January, 1648, another 
ordinance was passed forbidding all theatrical entertain- 
ments, and directing the theatres to be rendered unser- 
viceable. The Puritans, in their zealous determination 
to force all classes to become devout, declared that the 
acting of theatrical plays should be considered a crime 
and punished as such, and more than this, that even 
witnessing of such plays was a misdemeanor. Pramatic 
representations were thus entirely proscribed until the 
year 1656 ; nor indeed were they restored to favor until 
the accession of Charles II. in 1660 (Baldwin). Can 
any one doubt on which side of this controversy Bacon 
would have been found if the court had been hostile to 
the theatres? Do people realize that had Shakespeare's 
career been cast fifty years later thaw it was, the domin- 



174 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

ation of .the puritanical spirit which closed the thea- 
tres, " during which period no plays were written " 
(Baldwin), would doubtless have made it impossible to 
produce the plays? They were not finished in the 
manuscript, but were largely created on the stage. 
How much genius for art and literature has perished by 
the same spirit of sectarian rule no one can ever know. 
It is almost impossible to name a man in thirteen hundred 
years of history who sought to teach progress in art 
(un ecclesiastic), science or humanity who did not find 
it his enemy and persecutor. In Shakespeare's time there 
was no field in which his genius could find expression 
except on the stage ; and it is singular that the pastimes 
and amusements of the most self-indulgent sovereigns 
should have afforded a permit, or it might be said granted 
a license, by which the richest jewels of poetry could 
have birth in an age of savage theological persecution. 
The testimony of the history of the time is conclusive 
that the theatres existed by favor and protection of the 
court. During the time of Cromwell they were closed. 
A case which describes the attack of the Puritans upon 
the court for its encouragement of the theatres is that 
of William Prynne. In 1633 he published a violent 
attack upon the immoralities of the stage, and asserted in 
it that kings and emperors who had favored the drama 
had been carried off by violent deaths ; he also applied 
a disgraceful epithet to actresses. Just at that time the 
queen (who was very fond of dramatic entertainments) 
was taking part in the rehearsal of a ballet, and the 
offensive words were supposed to apply to her. Prynne 
was sentenced by the Star Chamber, put in the pillory 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 175 

and had his ears cut off. Prynne's offence was eight 
years after Bacon's death and in the reign of Charles I. 
It does not seem as though any reason more absurd could 
be concocted for the supposed concealment of dramatic 
genius than that it would prejudice the court against 
the claimant for royal favor. If Bacon's period had 
been in Cromwell's time such a theory would have 
answered the purpose ; but it was just the reverse in the 
reigns of Elizabeth and of James I. It was purely by 
their favor that Shakespeare existed as a player and poet. 

The kind of life that the actors must have led under 
the censorship of authorities so adverse to their exist- 
ence, and the enmity of so large a proportion of the 
people, would naturally bind them together and draw 
them into closer companionship ; and certainly no one 
among them as prominent as Shakespeare, who was 
known as the author of the plays, and who put them 
all on the stage, could possibly have Avon the regard of 
his fellows and attained his position and reputation if 
he had not proved himself worthy of it. And the same 
is true in regard to Southampton's friendship for him. 

There is no question but that Shakespeare accumu- 
lated money. Yet there is nothing in the condition of 
these theatres that indicates that they were prosperous. 
We do not hear of any other writer or actor who suc- 
ceeded in that way. We have Ben Jonson's ridicule of 
Shakespeare's company's " blind jade and a hamper, 
pumps full of gravel, stalking upon boards and barrel- 
heads to an old cracked trumpet," and we know that 
thirty pounds were given to the company for its relief, and 
Shakespeare's company demanded forty -shillings extra for 



176 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

performing the play of Richard II., because it was old 
and they feared it would not draw ; and in 1604 an al- 
lowance was made them to buy cloaks to appear at the 
entry of King James. If it should also be shown that 
play writing was not even remunerative, then the only 
temptation that is supposed to have influenced Bacon 
would be removed. This of course cannot be done, 
but appearances all denote that it was not. Even 
Shakespeare's leaving the stage while he was compara- 
tively a young man indicates that he found it a thank- 
less occupation. It is possible that his poems brought 
a good return. They had a great sale, five editions 
being called for in nine years, and the gift from the 
Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated 
his Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, is said to have 
been sufficient alone to account for all he possessed. 
These are not questions that can be decided. They 
must rest upon probability. 

All the evidence marks Shakespeare as a man of great 
independence of character, retiring disposition, studious 
industry, honesty and generosity. He won and re- 
tained to the end of his life the love and respect of all 
who knew him intimately, and produced and set upon 
the stage in a comparatively short time a wonderful 
volume which has no equal in the literature of the 
world. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 177 



CHAPTER IX. 

The record of Shakespeare's connection with the theatre and 
the plays performed before the court — Ben Jonson's sketch 
of Shakespeare — The court's protection of the players and 
slight esteem for Bacon's writings — Entry of King James 
into London. 

A newspaper article signed Thomas Davidson, and 
published a few months since, says, " Now Heminge 
and Cundell were fellow actors with Shakespeare. He 
left them each twenty-six shillings and eight pence ' to 
buy ringes.' How long they had known him, and what 
means they had of determining what, if anything, he 
had written, we have no means of discovering. Hem- 
inge died in 1630; Cundell, 1629." 

It is singular that any one should venture to make 
such a careless statement ; and in order to show what 
an abundance of facts exists to disprove it, I copy some 
dates from Mr. Fleay's book, which show that these 
men and Shakespeare were members of the same theat- 
rical company for an average lifetime : 

"'On May 6th, 1593, a precept was issued by the 
Lords of the Privy Council authorizing Lord Strange's 
players, Edward Allen, William Kempe, Thomas Pope, 
John Heminges, Augustine Philipes and George Brian, to 
play where the infection is not, so it be not within seven 
miles from London or of the court, that they may be 
in better readiness hereafter for her majesty's service/ 
This list of names is by no means complete, but prob- 
12 



178 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

ably does consist of all the shareholders therein. Shake- 
speare was not a shareholder yet." 

Of this company, Thomas Pope and George Brian 
were in the Earl of Leicester's company, which visited 
Stratford in 1587 (six years before), and with whom 
Shakespeare is supposed to have left Stratford. Au- 
gustine Philips was the one who arranged the play of 
Richard II. for Sir Gillie Meyricke eight years later 
(1601) at Essex House. John Heminge is the actor 
mentioned in Shakespeare's will twenty-three years 
after, and who thirty years later, together with Henry 
Condell, collected and published Shakespeare's plays in 
the folio edition of 1623. 

The Earl of Leicester had died in 1588, and the 
company found a new patron in Lord Strange, and be- 
came known as Lord Strange's men. Lord Strange 
died in 1594, and then they became known as the lord 
chamberlain's. But Mr. Fleay says, " There is no 
vestige of evidence that Shakespeare ever wrote for any 
other company than this one," which is, however, 
known under these various names. 

"The chamberlain's company at this date (1594) in- 
cluded W. Shakespeare, R. Burbadge, John Heminge, 
Augustine Philips, W. Kempe, T. Pope, G. Bryan (all 
of whom, with the possible exception of Burbadge, had 
been members of Lard Strange's company), together 
with Henry Condell, W. Sly, R. Cowley, N. Tooley, J. 
Duke, R. Pallant and T. Goodall, who had previously 
been in all probability members of the queen's com- 
pany." 

This is positive evidence of Shakespeare's association 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 179 

in 1594 with the two men who published his plays in 
1623. "This company played Hamlet June 9th, and 
Taming of the Shrew June 11th, 1594. They played 
again in the same year, December 26th and 28th, before 
the queen at Greenwich, apparently in the day time. 
Kempe, Shakespeare and Burbadge were paid the fol- 
lowing March. They played again a number of times 
at court in the winter of 1595, and payment was made 
to Heminge and Bryan. 

"There were the usual court performances in the 
winter of 1596-7. 

"Winter of 1597-8 the company performed four 
plays at Whitehall, one of which was Love's Labor 
Lost. 

"In the spring of 1599 Shakespeare's company left 
the Curtain and went to act at the Globe. The names 
of actors mentioned in one play at this time are Bur- 
badge, Heminge, Philips, Condell, Sly and Pope. At 
Christmas three performances were given at court, viz., 
December 26th at Whitehall, January 25th and February 
4th, 1600, at Richmond. 

" Winter of 1 600-1 there were three court perform- 
ances, December 26th, January 5th, February 24th. 

" March, 1601, in the Essex trials Meyrick was in- 
dicted 'for having procured the out-dated tragedy of 
Richard II. to be publicly acted at his own charge for 
the entertainment of the conspirators.. From Bacon's 
speech (State Trials) it appears that Philips was the man- 
ager who arranged this performance.' In the winter of 
this year they did not perform at court. 

"Winter of 1602-3 two plays were performed by 



180 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

Shakespeare's company at court — one at Whitehall De- 
cember 26th, one at Richmond February 2d. 

"March 24th, 1603, Queen Elizabeth died. 

" May 19th, 1603, a license was granted to L. Fletcher, 
W. Shakespeare, R. Burbadge, A. Philips, J. Heminge, 
H. Condell, W. Sly, R. Armin and R. Cowley to per- 
form stage plays, within their now usual house called 
the Globe or in any part of the kingdom. They are 
henceforth nominated the king's men. 

"In the winter of 1603-4 Shakespeare's company 
gave nine different plays at court. In February, 1604, 
£30 were given to R. Burbadge and his men for the 
maintenance of himself and the rest of his company, 
being prohibited to present any plays publicly in or 
near London, by reason of great peril that might grow 
through the extraordinary concourse and assembly of 
the people to an increase of the plague, till it shall 
please God to settle the city in a more perfect health. 
From July, 1603, until March, 1604, the theatres were 
probably closed. 

" In 1604 Shakespeare's company (the king's men), 
like those of other companies, had an allowance for 
cloaks, etc., to appear at the entry of King James on 
the 15th of March. In the winter of 1604-5 they 
acted seven of Shakespeare's plays and three others. 

" In August the king had a special order issued that 
every member of the company should attend at Somer- 
set House when the Spanish ambassador came to Eng- 
land. 

" On May 4th, 1605, Philips made his will, which was 
proved on the 13th. In it he leaves thirty shillings 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 181 

each to Shakespeare and Condell, and twenty shillings 
each to Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cook and Tooley, 
all his fellows ; to Beeston, his servant, thirty shillings ; 
to Gilburne, his 'late apprentice/ forty shillings and 
clothes ; to James Sandes, ' his apprentice/ forty shil- 
lings and musical instruments; to Hemings, Burbadge 
and Sly, overseers and executors, a bowl of silver of 
five pounds apiece. 

"October 9th, 1605, Shakespeare's company per- 
formed before the mayor and corporation of Oxford, and 
in the winter of 1605-6 ten plays were acted at court. 

"During July or August, 1606, Shakespeare's com- 
pany performed three plays before King James and the 
king of Denmark, two at Greenwich and one at Hamp- 
ton Court, and in the winter of 1606-7 they performed 
nine plays. 

" On December 31st Shakespeare's brother Edward, ' a 
player/ was buried at St. Saviours, Southwark, aged 
twenty-eight, with a forenoon knell of the great bell. 

" There were thirteen court performances by Shake- 
speare's company in the winter of 1607-8. 

" The court performances 1608-9 were twelve. 

" Winter of 1609-10 there were no plays, on account 
of the plague. 

"In 1610 the chief players of the company were 
Burbadge, Hemings, LoAvin, Ostler, Condell, Under- 
wood, Cooke, Tooley, Armin and Egglestone. There 
were fifteen plays performed at court at the Christmas 
festivities. In this year, 1610, Shakespeare is supposed 
to have written the Tempest and Winter's Tale and to 
have retired from theatrical work. Some make the 



182 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

date of his leaving the stage 1613. On the 10th of 
March, 1613, Shakespeare purchased a house with yard 
and haberdasher's shop for one hundred and forty 
pounds, subject to a mortgage of sixty pounds. This 
property had greatly increased in value since 1604, 
when it was sold for one hundred pounds, probably in 
consequence of the immediate vicinity of the theatre, 
which drew large custom for feathers and other articles 
of attire at Blackfriars. Shakespeare leased it to John 
Robinson, who had by this time seen the absurdity, in 
a business point of view, of his opposition to the estab- 
lishment of the theatre in 1596. One of the trustees 
for the legal estate (the mortgage remaining unredeemed 
until 1613) was John Heming, unquestionably Shake- 
speare's friend the actor." This looks as though Shake- 
speare had not forsaken London, although he may have 
parted with his interest in the theatre. 

" On June 29th, 1613, the Globe Theatre was burned 
down. The play that was being given was Shake- 
speare's Henry VIII. ' The old ballad about the fire 
says the reprobates prayed for the fool and Henry 
Condy (Condell), who were apparently the last actors 
who escaped.' " 

All of these dates I have copied from Mr. F. G. 
Fleay's Life and Works of Shakespeare, which is a most 
careful study of this whole subject and a deeply-interest- 
ing book. I do not know where the history of the 
plays and the prominent facts in Shakespeare's life can 
be found in so pleasing and compact a form as in 
this volume. If people who think there is no way 
of " discovering how long Heminge and Condell knew 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 183 

Shakespeare, and what facilities they had for determin- 
ing what he wrote, if anything," will read Mr. Fleay's 
book, they will find their error about that kind of data, 
and will find facts enough about Shakespeare's life to 
surprise them that people should speak of him in any 
doubtful and problematic way. Indeed, there seems to 
be more known of his private life than of Bacon's, and 
its interesting facts are set forth in such an attractive 
form in Mr. Fleay's book that only the fear of taking 
such wholesale liberty with it has restrained me from 
copying much more. 

From the data given by Mr. Fleay it appears that 
Shakespeare acted in the same company (for which he 
furnished thirty-seven plays) with Heminge and Con- 
dell from 1593-4 until 1610 — sixteen or seventeen 
years. Of course their acquaintance commenced before 
1593. When Philips made his will in 1605 and left 
thirty shillings to Shakespeare, they had been compan- 
ions at least twelve years. As Shakespeare left tokens 
of remembrance to Heminge, Condell and Burbadge at 
his death in 1616, it is evident that their intercourse 
continued to that time, and therefore it is shown that 
the companionship of these men had existed at least 
twenty-two years at the time of Shakespeare's death. 
Their acquaintance antedated 1593; yet their known 
association is a remarkable record of friendship, partic- 
ularly in a calling that naturally provokes the most 
extreme tests of patience and indulgence, and it is on 
all sides an evidence of sturdy and steadfast character. ' 

I am pleased to believe that it was the wisdom that 
wrote the precepts for Laertes' memory, and the spirit 



184 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

of " so worthy a Friend and Fellow as was our Shake- 
speare," which prevailed in the counsels of his com- 
pany and bound them together " with hoops of steel." 
For my part, I cannot read the history of the court, 
the intrigues, jealousies, hatreds, plots and schemes of 
personal ambition, and the falsehood, suspicion and du- 
plicity that marked all its intercourse, without an in- 
voluntary comparison between it and the bond of good 
will and honest comradeship that held these fellows 
together during a lifetime of devotion to their art and 
of unconscious service to futurity ; and if the compar- 
ison be followed to Bacon, hired to defame the memory 
of his benefactor, on the one side, and on the other to the 
two players laboring without self-profit to do " an office 
for the dead," it is the limit of contrast. 

Their love did not end with the poet's death. Seven 
years later, and thirty years after a known date of their 
association with him, these two men published, to the best 
of their ability, all they could find, of his works, arranged 
in as perfect form as it was in their power to place it. It 
is reasonable to suppose that they had spent most of the 
time between Shakespeare's death and the date of pub- 
lication in collecting and preparing the plays. They 
were not writers. Neither of them ever made any 
essay in that direction as far as is known. The liberty 
which the printers took with the manuscript indicates 
that the players either consulted them or w r ere obliged 
to submit in some degree to their dictation. 

It is probable from Ben Jonson's allusion to the 
players that all of Shakespeare's fellows joined in the 
work of collecting and publishing the plays, although 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 185 

Heminge and Condell were the principals ; and it is in 
harmony with the generous nature of the dear " old 
player," his good comradeship and modest estimate of 
his own gifts, that he should have left his plays to those 
who naturally seemed to inherit them when he left the 
stage, and to whom they were valuable. 

In their effort to put the plays in their proper order, 
to discard what was spurious and retain the acting ver- 
sions, they must have been guided largely by their 
memory, stage experience and familiarity with the rep- 
resentations, and in this respect they were the fittest 
men for such a work, even though their literary ability 
was not equal to that of the writers of the day. 

The remarkable absence, in the poet's life and writ- 
ings, of any desire to obtrude his personality upon the 
public notice, to make a place for himself in history, to 
contend for his own, and the elevation of art above per- 
sonal ambition, literary rivalry or fame, are the quali- 
ties which oblige his lovers to seek outside of his own 
writings for aids to present him to their imagination. 
What was his estimate of , himself, what merit he 
thought his work possessed, and whether he ever specu- 
lated upon its place in the literature of future ages, no 
one can learn by any expression from him. Unlike the 
rule of genius distinguished in poetry, he sang no song 
of himself, either of vanity or pity. While his con- 
temporary felicitated himself that his work, carefully 
swathed in Latin, should supersede "all the systems 
of philosophy hitherto received or imagined," Shake- 
speare betrayed no consciousness that his life's work in 
a calling held in the lowest esteem would invest him 



186 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

with any interest whatever in history. In everything 
these men were opposites. Ko two literary men could 
be more unlike. 

The most valuable testimony that we have to de- 
scribe Shakespeare is a few expressions of the love and 
esteem of his friends, fellows and contemporaries, 
which have come down to us in an accidental way, but 
they contain more than appears upon a cursory reading. 

Ben Jonson's sketch in his Discoveries is one of the 
most valuable of these, and was probably prompted by 
the discussions among the theatrical people regarding 
Shakespeare during the time the players were collecting 
the plays for publication. He writes, " I remember the 
players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shake- 
speare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he 
never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would 
he had blotted a thousand ; which they thought a ma- 
levolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for 
their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to com- 
mend their friend by wherein he most faulted, and to 
justify mine own candor ; for I loved the man, and do 
honor his memory on this side idolatry, as much as any. 
He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature ; 
had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle 
expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility, that 
sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. 
His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had 
been so too. Many times he fell into those things that 
could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person 
of Caesar, one speaking to him, l Caesar, thou dost me 
wrong/ He replied, ' Csesar did never wrong but 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 187 

with just cause/ and such like, which were ridiculous. 
But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was 
ever more in him to be praised than pardoned." 

I have observed that the Baconites, in quoting the 
foregoing, stop at the sentence " which they thought a 
malevolent speech/' and thus use it to convey the im- 
pression that Jonson discredited the players' statement 
and sneered at their praise. This is plainly erroneous. 
He not only agrees with them, but goes on to cite in- 
stances in his own knowledge of the same facility in 
Shakespeare ; but he does not admire it, and he thinks 
the players lack discrimination in choosing one of Shake- 
speare's least creditable qualities for their praise, which 
he evidently regards as " idolatry." 

Jonson's criticism is worth far more for the picture it 
draws of Shakespeare than for his estimate of him as a 
poet.- Of that there is no dispute; but of the qualities 
that Jonson attributes to him no one will question his 
competent judgment. It is in perfect accord with his 
opinion as expressed in many places in his Discoveries, 
on the subject of criticism, composition, poetry, elo- 
quence, etc. He wrote a grammar, and regarded him- 
self as authority, if not upon all subjects, at least on 
everything relating to literature. His criticism is very 
rarely in the vein of approval ; with him very little 
praise seasoned an immense amount of faultfinding. 
Nothing less than the indisputable "brave notions," 
"gentle expressions" and generous nature of Shake- 
speare could ever have drawn from him the sketch I 
have quoted, or his verses in the frontispiece of the folio 
of 1623. He had no cause to flatter Shakespeare. He 



188 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

had vented his ill-humor and indulged his vanity in 
Shakespeare's lifetime by ridiculing his plays and by 
some unhandsome conduct ; and although this page was 
written in remembrance of the " gentle expressions" 
and of Shakespeare's bearing toward him, it could 
hardly be expected to accord him unqualified praise in 
the field of poetry in which his pen had labored so often 
to satirize him ; but in regard to Shakespeare's charac- 
ter, wit, which " was his own," fancy and facility of 
speech it was as full, choice and enthusiastic as the most 
ardent friend of Shakespeare could desire. 

Jouson was a scold ; fond of dispute and contention. 
He seems to have been the one man too uncomfortable 
to remain in Shakespeare's company, and between whom 
and Shakespeare there was an estrangement. Mr. 
Fleay says, " No intercourse can be shown between 
them after 1603." He had a large development of a 
quality praised by Bacon — " if you will grant his opin- 
ion, let it be with some distinction." He killed an actor 
in a duel, was in prison a number of times, and seems 
to have been about as bent upon seeking a quarrel as 
Shakespeare was careful to avoid one. He desired, 
above everything else, to be regarded as honest. In his 
paragraph upon Shakespeare this motive is evident. He 
says, " I had not told posterity this but for their ignor- 
ance" and "to justify mine own candor." 

The wording of this speech sounds as though it were 
written in denial of an imputation, from the players, 
that his praise of " their friend " was not as full and 
complete as they would have it; and to defend himself 
from the charge of malevolence (simply because of his 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 189 

unwillingness to follow them in their admiration of a 
facility of language which did not commend itself to 
his judgment) he went on to describe Shakespeare by 
rules of more scholarly discernment, to which he added 
the personal traits which had won his regard. He 
would hardly have said that he honored his memory as 
much as any, except in answer to a challenge or insin- 
uation to the contrary; and in saying that he was 
indeed honest, he evidently repeated what the players 
emphasized, and cordially endorsed it. Also speaking 
of Shakespeare as their friend shows that he was not 
his friend in the sense of loyalty and fellowship that 
had existed between Shakespeare and the players. 

It is difficult to see how any one can discredit Jon- 
son's sketch of Shakespeare, or how, after reading it, 
any one can suppose such a man the mask of another, 
or that he could sink his own individuality. Jonson 
was not a man likely to invent merits w T here he could 
discover demerits. He ridiculed Hamlet, the Win- 
ter's Tale and the Tempest. In his opinion only 
laborious writing was good. He was almost as pedantic 
as Bacon, but infinitely superior to him as a writer of 
critical sketches.- Although he helped Bacon translate 
his works, he has paid him a reversed compliment in 
his sketch on Essayists. He says, " Some that turn 
over all books and are equally searching in all papers, 
that write out of what they presently find or meet, 
without choice ; by which means it happens that what 
they have discredited or impugned in one week they 
have before or afterwards extolled the same in another. 
Such are all the essayists, even their master, Montaigne. 



190 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE 

These, in all they write, confess still what books they 
have read last, and therein their own folly so much 
that they bring it to the state raw and undigested ; not 
that the place did need it neither, but that they thought 
themselves furnished, and would vent it." 

In disparagement of the facility that flowed so easily 
in Shakespeare, Jonson cites " the incomparable Virgil, 
who brought forth his verses like a bear, and after- 
wards formed them with licking;" and of Euripides, 
" who, having brought forth only three verses in three 
days, and those with difficulty and throes," replied to 
Alcestis, who gloried that he could have produced a 
hundred, that the latter's would not last three days, 
while his would " to all time." He says again, " Things 
wrote with labor deserve to be so read, and will last 
their age." Again, " If the mind be staid, grave and 
composed, the wit is so ; that vitiated, the other is 
blown and deflowered." Again he writes of the " easi- 
ness which makes itself justly suspected," and in this 
manner he gives pages of instruction as to how one 
should observe, consider, reflect, excogitate, seek, avoid, 
judge, amend, etc., etc., which is all very excellent in 
its place, but hardly requisite to the genius that wrote 
the Merry Wives of Windsor in a fortnight. Shake- 
speare spoke of him as " slow as the elephant, in whom 
nature hath crowded all humors f and it is most nat- 
ural that he should have told posterity of the ignor- 
ance of the players, who " chose that circumstance to 
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted." 

In utter denial of the idea that play writing was not 
in favor at court, Ben Jonson is a conspicuous example. 



BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND BACON? 191 

King James was so much pleased with one of his masks 
(1621) that he granted him the reversion of the office 
of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer 
upon him the order of knighthood, and increased his 
pension two hundred marks. In 1628 he was ap- 
pointed city chronologer, with a salary of one hundred 
nobles a year. He took the salary, but did not perform 
the services. In 1629 he wrote a poor comedy, and in 
the epilogue he dwelt upon the neglect he had experi- 
enced at the hands of the king and queen ; and the 
king (Charles I.) sent him a gift of a hundred pounds, 
increased his salary to that amount, and in addition 
made him a royal gift of a tierce of canary annually. 

Although literary merit was sure of recognition in 
the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I., Bacon's 
writings found little favor. Neither his essays nor his 
metaphysics suited the taste or temper of the court.'- 
The queen thought his literary pretensions shallow, and 
the king never read the works which Bacon dedicated 
to him, but made a pun upon his masterpiece. The 
only use the queen had for Bacon was as an attorney ; 
and his advancement under James I. was not due in 
any sense to his erudition, but was purely a reward for 
his abject servility and moral obliquity. Dickens says, 
" I know of nothing more abominable in history than 
the adulation that was lavished on this king and the 
vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit of lying 
produced at his court. It is much to be doubted whether 
one man of honor and not utterly self-disgraced kept his 
place near James I. Lord Bacon, that able and wise 
philosopher, as the first judge in the kingdom in this 



192 IS THERE ANY RESEMBLANCE, ETC. 

reign, became a public spectacle of dishonesty and cor- 
ruption, and in his base flattery of his sowship, and in 
his crawling servility to his dog and slave, disgraced 
himself even more." 

In contrast with Bacon's fawning servility to King 
James, Shakespeare has nowhere honored his existence 
by a line. The contrast exists also in Henry VII., of 
whose reign Bacon wrote a long, prosy history, while 
Shakespeare passed from Henry VI. to Henry VIII. 
in his historical plays. 

AVhat the Puritans condemned in King James as his 
vices represents to me the only side of his character 
that is not utterly despicable. In fact, the picture most 
attractive to my imagination in the history of the court 
is that of those amusements and festivities in which for 
a moment it ceased from and forgot its dreadful bus- 
iness of government. 

Bv the court's defence of the stage and its friendly 
protection and encouragement (from whatever motive) 
of the theatrical companies, Shakespeare was permitted 
to produce his plays ; and the man who stood in the 
crowd at the entry of King James, clad in a cloak fur- 
nished him by the government, has shed a glory upon 
the -history of that period and invested its principal 
personages with an interest entirely foreign to the mo- 
tives that controlled political events. 

" This wide and universal theatre 
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene 
Wherein we act in." — As You Like It. 



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